March 21, 2003

Members in Attendance:

• Phil Bryant
• Charlotte Cassady
• Helen Curol
• Gwen Handelman
• Edward Hanna
• Tim Jarrell
• Sharon Lassar
• Owen Oatley
• Buck Paolone
• George Sullivan
• Agnes Tillerson
• Steven Wood
• Carolyn Lewis - DFO

Staff:

• Sallie Chavez - TAP Analyst
• Nancy Ferree - TAP Manager

Panel Chair Edward Hanna welcomed everyone and introduced the new Designated Federal Official, Carolyn Lewis from New Orleans, LA. Carolyn gave the panel members a brief introduction of her background which includes more than 25 years of experience with the IRS and more than 14 years with Problem Resolution/Taxpayer Advocate. She said she is real excided to be a part of this group.

Roll call
Roll was taken. Quorum was met.

Review of February 7, 2003 Minutes
There were several corrections made to the minutes. After these changes are made, these minutes are accepted by consensus.

TAP ISSUES
Chair Ed Hanna stated he would like the issues to be worked in smaller bits. Just take a small item out of the bigger issues and work that item and make a recommendation on that small issue. Regroup the issues under broad items and work on pieces.

W-4
Sub-committee member Lassar said she found an Internal Audit Area that did a review on W-4s. It stated that IRS reviews questionable W-4s (a very small amount of them) and determines if they are legitimate. IRS is trying to automate this process. There are no plans to raise the threshold of the 10 exemptions.

She asked for member's opinion on whether or not to pursue and recommend a change. Suggested approaches included for IRS to send messages to employer to encourage employees to claim more exemptions or to change the instructions on W-4.

Customer Fairness
Sub-committee chair George Sullivan stated he sent a request to the TAP Staff for information on Union Presidents and IRS Office Manager and he received a response from TAP Manager Ferree that this was not within the purview of the TAP. He just wanted to advise these people that TAP was available for employee to provide information to the TAP. TAP Manager Ferree said she misunderstood what was requested. She also stated that IRS employee have other means to provide suggestion. Meeting with employees is not in TAP scope.

Sub-Committee member Handelman stated that TAP is not CAP. Even so, no issues should be lost.

Sub-Committee member Oatley stated that the idea was to have employees go to the Union President with ideas.

Sub-committee chair Sullivan requested Sub-Committee member Oatley to prepare an outline to go to the Joint Committee.

Telephone Listing/Answering Quality
Sub-Committee chair Tim Jarrell stated his sub-committee has developed two major issues affecting telephone listing and answering qualify.

The first is where the taxpayer is unable to reach a qualified person to discuss the notice they received. Possible solutions include listing the Taxpayer Advocate Service in the blue pages of each metropolitan phone book, list the Taxpayer Advocate Service in the white pages, list phone numbers on notices that refer the taxpayer to their geographic all center so their records are easily accessible to the IRS employee (this could also be a part of one call accountability), provide information via the e-filing website so a taxpayer can look up information on where their tax return was routed with the appropriate phone number, a national directory that has all of the IRS phone numbers by geographic regions, enhance the current white page listings to refer to numbers by geographic region, and list the Taxpayer Advocate Service information in the lobby of the local offices.

The second issue is the quality of service provided to taxpayer via the phone system. Recommended solutions include develop a survey with 4 or 5 questions to submit to taxpayer to help identify major areas that need improvement. The format of the questions would be a scale of 1 - 5. A suggestion was also made to have an automatic call come back to the taxpayer with a survey.

Committee member Handelman said she did not have the report and asked that it be sent out to all committee members. Sub-committee chair Jarrell will email it to all committee members today.

Walk-in Review
Chair Ed Hanna stated he has no report. This item is on hold until the May meeting in Atlanta.

OIC
Sub-Committee member Owen Oatley referred to the National Taxpayer Advocate's Report to Congress and her Address to the Ways and Means Committee. Nina Olson addresses the OIC problems in both of these reports. Committee chair Hanna state that this is one of those issue that needs to be narrowed down to work on a single area. This needs to be put on hold until that can be determined.

Committee member Lassar said that the panel needs to find the person on the National Taxpayer Advocate's staff who is working on this project. She said she has asked for information in the past and has not received a response. TAP Manager Ferree stated she forwarded all inquiries up to the appropriate individuals.

Committee member Tillerson stated if staff is having a problem getting information the panel should be forwarding the issue to TAP Director Daryle Temple.

Notice Response Timeframe
Sub-Committee chair Curol reported that her sub-committee met yesterday and had a very good meeting. They discussed the preparation of a survey to send out to all the Area 3 offices to determine how things are handled in the offices. Other things that were discussed during the meeting were the date on the notice, mailroom procedures and explaining the problem better.

Sub-Committee chair Curol asked the committee for suggestions for the questions. Committee chair Hanna asked the sub-committee to expand this issue to include all notices. He suggests that all committee members ask practitioner friends and anyone who gets notices about the timeframes on these notices. He states he thinks they are getting better.

Committee chair Hanna asked committee members to respond to either Sub-Committee chair Curol or Committee member Cassidy with any questions they would like to see on the survey.

One Call/One Accountability/Complaint Process Resolution
Sub-Committee chair Buck Paolone, along with Sub-committee members Jarrell and Sullivan will prepare a report on this issue for the next meeting

Recordkeeping
Sub-committee chair Charlotte Cassidy stated she forwarded her recommendation to Committee chair Hanna yesterday. The report was discussed and there were some problems with the wording. She will forward a request to the TAP staff concerning the code section.

Schedule K-1s
Sub-Committee chair Owen Oatley discussed his proposal. Committee chair Hanna asked him to draft a report to be sent to the committee. He as that all the committee member get back to Sub-Committee chair Oatley with their comments.

Other Issues
Committee chair Hanna requested a volunteer to write a recommendation concerning the "red" copy of the Forms W-2, W-3, 1096, 1097 and 1099. No one volunteer so Committee chair Hanna said he would create something for the next meeting.

Committee chair Hanna requested that everyone respond to his recent email concerning the time commitment of 300 hours per year for TAP members. He wants to present this information to the Joint Committee.

New Issues

Issue 1 - 10% income tax reduction for employees of charitable organizations. Committee discussed whether or not they want to pursue something that is legislative. They decide to advise this individual to contact his Congressman and Senators.

Issue 2 - can't get answers on a statue for an SFR. This appears to be an item for the Taxpayer Advocate Service.

Lost 2553 (S election). Need to find the office where this problem occurred. It may be a mailroom problem.

Issue 3 - appointments difficult to get - make it easier for the elderly to receive tax help. This falls under the Office Review issue. Will hold this for the face-to-face meeting in May.

Issue 4 - problem with toll-free number. There is already a sub-committee on this and it would be included with the Telephone List/Answering Quality issue.

Issue 5 - IRS date stamp envelope. This falls into the Notice Response Timeframe issue sub-committee.

Issue 6 - problem with returns filed by clergy. Committee discussed this issue. It appears there are 2 problems here. First is that a "specialist" is needed to work on this type of question. The other is that it appears there is a systemic problem with the processing of this type of return. Committee chair Hanna will work on this issue.

Issue 7 - wants IRS to allow taxpayer to e-file directly to the IRS without a middleman. Area 5 is working on this issue and has requested all suggestions that come in concerning this issue be forwarded to them.

Issue 8 - requests to be a member of the panel. Analyst has already responded to this individual and put his name on a list to be advised when recruitment begins again.

Issue 9 - offers help in writing and communicating on complex topics. The committee discussed this and determined that it was not the roll of the TAP to handle something like this.

The next meeting is schedule for the April 25, 2003 at 11:00 am ET.

Meeting was adjourned.