Area 1 Committee Meeting Minutes

March 2, 2005

Opening of the Meeting
Ghoniem welcomed all the participants.

Roll Call

Panel Members Attending

• Elizabeth Ghoniem, MA, Chair
• Philip Cimino, NY
• Harvey Epstein, NH
• Harold Gadon, RI
• Elizabeth Ghoniem, MA, Chair
• James Grimaldi, NY
• Michael Guthman, CT
• Dorothy Havey, ME, Vice Chair
• Paul Nagel, NY
• Sanford Searleman, NY

Panel Members Absent

• Aaron Bell, NY
• Charles Silva, MA

  Quorum was met.

TAP Staff Attending

• Peter Gorga, Jr., DFO
• Marisa Knispel, TAP Program Analyst
• Sandra Ramirez, TAP Program Manager

IRS Guest

• Marsha O’Shaughnessy, LTA, Portsmouth, NH

Office Report
Ramirez said the National Office ordered business cards for the new members and should be sent to them soon. In the interim, while waiting for those business cards, the Brooklyn office will draft temporary business cards for the new members to use in outreach and for any returning member who needs a small supply. The office will mail these cards next week.

Other Issues

Proposal on Eliminating Form 2688
Last year, the Area 1 Committee wrote a proposal to eliminate Form 2688, Application for Additional Extension of Time to File U.S. Individual Income Tax Return, and to make the automatic extension (Form 4868) a six-month automatic extension to file rather than a four-month automatic extension. The reason for these recommendations was to make the individual extension of time to file equivalent to the corporation’s extension and simplify the extension to file process. This year, the SBSE Issue Committee was charged with assisting the Office of Burden Reduction of the SBSE organization with this task. However, TAP discovered that the Office of Burden Reduction’s project was not created as a response to the Area 1’ Committee’s recommendation. Ramirez is currently working with the National Office and the TAP office in Milwaukee to recognize the efforts of the Area 1 Committee for their recommendation on this issue.

Resignation of Area 1 Member
Ramirez announced the recent resignation of Eileen Shuman, our representative in Vermont due to personal time constraints. She also indicated that the recruitment season for the TAP will begin on April 1st and end on April 29th. Since there is no alternate member for the state of Vermont, we must wait for the new recruitment to interview and select a representative in that state. Meanwhile, Ramirez noted, due to Shuman’s resignation the remaining members of the Subcommittee #3 should elect a replacement for the position of subcommittee chair.

Meeting Minutes
The minutes of February 2, 2005 were approved by consensus.

Joint Committee Report
Ghoniem was unable to attend the last Joint Committee meeting in its entirety since she was traveling out of the country at that time. However, Vice-chair Havey did attend in its entirety. As a result, both Ghoniem and Havey reported on the activities of the Joint Committee. Ghoniem explained she raised three issues to the Joint Committee: 1) non-receipt of business cards: members need business cards to conduct outreach and meet contacts, 2) travel reimbursement checks: some checks are not being addressed to the members’ residence address, getting lost and thus, members are not reimbursed timely, 3) a process needs to be created for the TAP staff to follow up on recommendations that the IRS has accepted and promised to implement. For example, Shuman recommended that a table on phase-outs be placed on the 1040 Instruction booklet. After the IRS originally responded they would consider inclusion of this table for the 2004 tax season, at the time of printing the forms and instructions, they decided not to include the table. A response was sent to the TAP but the Area 1 Committee did not receive it until recently. The Joint Committee agreed with the suggestion to create a system to confirm implementation of IRS responses and will work with the TAP staff to create this system.

An action item from the Joint Committee’s discussion, Ghoniem said, is for all committees to use the Meeting Satisfaction Survey following a face-to-face meeting or teleconference in order to measure the efficiency of the meeting. Epstein and Cimino have taken this Survey with their Issue Committee and commented that it is not a great tool to measure how productive a meeting is. Ghoniem suggested for any member to include suggestions and comments to improve the Survey on the Survey Form. Knispel will send out the Meeting Survey Form after this meeting, collect the responses and summarize them for Ghoniem and the rest of the committee. The originals will be kept in the Brooklyn office.

Ghoniem indicated that vice-chair Havey will continue to attend the Joint Committee teleconferences.

Havey continued reporting on the remainder of the Joint Committee’s teleconference. She explained that this Committee is concerned with the selection of future TAP members. The TAP is producing an electronic version of the TAP Handbook and will make it available on TAPSpeak. Havey said that TAP Chair Gwen Handelman has been traveling for the TAP extensively in the past few months and met with National Taxpayer Advocate (NTA) Nina Olson on several occasions to discuss the TAP.

Among other issues discussed were 1) the issue of increasing the tax refund threshold from $1 to $5, 2) the creation of a legislative issue roster titled “TAP’s Proposed Legislative Issues” to be addressed to NTA Olson, 3) extending the Joint Committee meetings from 1 to 2 hours, and 4) the new TAP Communication Issue Committee will be charged with determining the factors that make a TAP committee successful.

IRS Guest
LTA Marsha O’Shaughnessy thanked the Committee for inviting her to participate in today’s meeting and said that inviting the LTAs to their monthly meetings offers them the opportunity to become more involved with the TAP. She added that this is a great opportunity for her to become acquainted with Harvey Epstein, the TAP representative for New Hampshire.

O’Shaughnessy spoke about the importance of outreach. She indicated that grassroots outreach is important for the TAS and the TAP as well in order to market these organizations in community pockets that do not receive the organization’s marketing materials. It is a way of disseminating information about our existence and purpose. The increased need for community outreach is supported by the fact that some of the IRS Taxpayer Assistance Centers are closing due to lack of staffing and increased overhead expenses. Eventually, the New York/New England area will be affected by these office closings since many are of the small offices are located here. Hence, outreach and marketing of organizations like the TAS and TAP are crucial to the taxpayers. She and other LTAs, work with NTA Olson in a Communication and Liaison team to accomplish this.

O’Shaughnessy also discussed the type of cases that are addressed to her office. She indicated that her staff is currently helping the Manhattan office with their case overload. Gadon asked if the TAS rejects cases that do not meet TAS guidelines and O’Shaughnessy responded that first the staff will assist the taxpayer by directing him in the right direction or referring the case to the appropriate party; then, the case is closed.
Cimino asked what type of media marketing, if any, does the TAS do. O’Shaughnessy responded that most of the media marketing is Public Service Announcements, but they have also done some TV and radio ads using a marketing company that targets local communities.

O’Shaughnessy thanked the members again for inviting her to participate in this meeting.

Subcommittee Reports
The elected Subcommittee Chairs reported on their respective subcommittees:

Subcommittee #1 – Epstein, chair; members: Bell, Ghoniem and Cimino.

Epstein explained that the Subcommittee is working on the Form W-4 as it concerns multiple wage-earners. He indicated that the group has subdivided and each member was assigned a task using the current format for writing a proposal. Epstein also said that Cimino and he have completed their respective assignments and requested Ghoniem’s. He added that Cimino has provided them with an excellent example illustrating the problem and once all assignments are reviewed and collated, and the proposal is complete, they will share it with the rest of the Area 1 members.

The next teleconference for this Subcommittee will on March 11th at 9:00 AM ET.

Subcommittee #2 – Grimaldi, acting chair; members: Gadon, Guthman, Nagel.

Although the Subcommittee had scheduled a teleconference, this one had to be rescheduled due to personal scheduling conflicts. The next teleconference will be on Friday, March 11th at 8:30 AM ET.

Subcommittee #3 –members: Havey, Searleman and Silva.

Shuman had referred a written proposal to the members on “Adding a Penalty and Interest Statement to IRS Correspondence” prior to her leaving the TAP. The Subcommittee members will meet again to re-elect a chair and discuss this and other issues.

Other Issues
Ghoniem spoke briefly on the proposal that Shuman wrote in 2003 to include a phase-outs table in the 1040 Instructions and explained the response from the IRS to this proposal. She asked members to review this proposal with the IRS response and make a decision on whether they wanted to close this issue or consider it for further action. Jim Grimaldi volunteered Subcommittee #2 to review and perhaps modify the proposal to resubmit to the Joint Committee.

Office Report
Knispel reminded members and DFO to mark their calendars for the Area 1 Committee’s face-to-face meeting in Boston on June 16-18th. Also, she requested that anyone participating in outreach events send her a completed Outreach & Expense Report and reminded them that any request for reimbursement of expenses must be approved prior to the outreach.

Gorga will email Knispel a list of upcoming outreach events in the NY area and she will distribute the list to the members.

Public Participation
None.

Closing Assessment
Ghoniem thanked all the members and guest for their participation.

The meeting closed at 3:04 PM ET.

The next meeting will be on April 6, 2005 at 3:00 PM ET.

Action Items
Knispel will email the Meeting Survey to all the members. The members will complete it and email it back to Knispel. She will collate the responses for Ghoniem and the other team members.

Ghoniem will complete her assignment for Subcommittee #1.