Amends existing law to provide for the exchange of certain information between the State Tax Commission and the Department of Health and Welfare for investigation of fraud.

This bill allows DHW to enter an MOU with the Tax Commission to share state tax information for public assistance fraud investigations. The use of tax information will allow fraud investigators to investigate and prosecute cases swiftly. Currently, fraud investigators can only issue subpoenas for banking information, which does not always provide an accurate representation of a household's total income. Further, responses to subpoenas are not always timely, and in some cases are not responded to at all. Household tax information from the Tax Commission will would drastically reduce the investigative time spent on a fraud case and allow for more efficient use of investigators’ time. The Tax Commission was given an opportunity to review this language and DHW and the Tax Commission have begun preliminary discussions on implementing this bill if enacted.