Tax Refund Offset: Reduction of a debtor's tax overpayments by the amount of legally enforceable debt owed to a federal agency. A tax refund offset is a type of administrative offset.
Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN): Social Security Number (SSN) for individuals or the Employee Identification Number (EIN) for business organizations or non-profit entities.
TE-045 Innovative Finance Initiative: A research program begun by the Federal Highway Administration in 1994 in response to Executive Order 12893. This finance initiative is designed to increase investment, accelerate projects, promote the use of existing innovative finance provisions, and establish the basis for future initiatives by waiving selected federal policies and procedures, thus allowing specific transportation projects to be advanced through the use of non-traditional finance mechanisms.
Terminate Collection Action: Ceasing active collection of a debt. The act of removing the debt from accounting records is to "write off." A decision to terminate collection action occurs concurrently with the write-off.
TIFIA Credit Program: As part of its 1998 enactment of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA 21), Congress established a Federal credit program for large transportation projects. Sections 1501 to 1504 of TEA 21, collectively the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act of 1998 (TIFIA), authorize the Department of Transportation (DOT) to provide three forms of credit assistance - secured (direct) loans, loan guarantees and standby lines of credit - to surface transportation projects of national or regional significance. A specific goal of TIFIA is to leverage private co-investment. Because the program offers credit assistance, rather than grant funding, potential projects must be capable of generating revenue streams via user charges or other dedicated funding sources. In general, a project's eligible costs must be reasonably anticipated to total at least $100 million. Credit assistance is available to highway, transit, passenger rail and multi-modal projects. Other types of eligible projects include intercity passenger rail or bus projects, publicly owned intermodal facilities on or adjacent to the National Highway System, projects that provide ground access to airports or seaports, and surface transportation projects principally involving the installation of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), for which the cost threshold is $30 million. The TIFIA credit assistance is limited to 33 percent of eligible project costs. For more information, visit the TIFIA website at http://tifia.fhwa.dot.gov/.
Title 23 of the United States Code: Highway title that includes many of the laws governing the federal-aid highway program. The title embodies substantive provisions of law that Congress considers permanent and need not be reenacted in each new highway authorization act.
Title 49 of the United States Code: Transportation title that includes laws governing various transportation-related programs and agencies, including the Department of Transportation, general and intermodal programs, interstate commerce, rail and motor vehicle programs, aviation programs, pipelines, and commercial space transportation.
Turnkey: A generic term for a variety of public/private partnership arrangements whereby a public sector entity awards a contract to one or more private firms to undertake the development, construction, and/or operation of an infrastructure project for a predetermined period of time before turning the project back over to the public entity. Turnkeys may take various forms, including design-build-transfer and build-operate-transfer. |
