Area 7 Committee Meeting Minutes

November 4, 2003
Teleconference
Noon to 1:30 pm

Attendees:

• Curtis Feese
• Cheyanna Jaffke, Area 7 Chair
• Howard Perkins
• David Robinson
• Charles Taylor
• Laurie Keleman, Designated Federal Official
• Judi Nicholas, TAP Manager
• Mary O'Brien, Program Analyst

Members Not Present:

• Yvonne Gallegos Bodle
• James Griffin
• Chris Lowe

Welcome and Announcements
Cheyanna welcomed everyone to the meeting and asked for a roll call. Mary called roll, six members present; therefore, the quorum requirements were met. Cheyanna reviewed the agenda for today's call.

Approve Minutes
A motion was made to approve the minutes with no changes. By consensus, the minutes were approved.

Discussion of Annual Meeting in Washington DC
Cheyanna gave a brief synopsis of the decisions made during the annual meeting for the members not able to attend.

Quorum
It was decided to change the number of panel members to make up a quorum. By consensus, the quorum requirement will be met with four panel members.

Mission for area 7

• Participate in outreaches to gather issues from the public
• Work on issues received from the public

Outreach Group Goals for the upcoming year

• The committee set a goal to have two group outreaches.
• The committee set the goal to have every panel member visit a walk-in office to observe

Issues: How will the Area 7 committee work new issues?
By consensus it was decided that for each issue, a panel member assigned on an alphabetical rotation will “Shepherd” the issue. This does not mean that the panel member will do all the research on the issue. Mary is available to work with the panel member on research and resources.

Approval Process
The committee decided to do as much business as possible electronically. Agendas, Meeting minutes, Issues, etc. will be sent electronically. An example: The committee will approve agendas by email. The results of any action done electronically will be reported out at the next business meeting. All discussions concerning an issue will be discussed during a meeting. The email will be simply approve or not approve. If there is any not approve votes, the issue will then be discussed again at the next meeting. The committee decided that when asked for a response that it is necessary to reply to all.

Pending Issues

Adult Education
Charles discussed what the progress for the Adult Education. The focus is on education concerning EITC. The subcommittee has been involved with the VITA task force in California . The next meeting for this task force will be on November 17 th . Charles has been working with banks and insurance companies to recruit VITA volunteers for this effort. The idea is to try this locally as a test group and the idea would be to broaden the scope.

Compound /Complex Interest versus Simple Interest
By consensus it was decided to put this issue on hold until Yvonne can participate on the call.

Tax Fraud
By consensus it was decided to put this issue on hold until Jim could participate on the call.

Installment Agreement
Laurie explained that the committee working on this issue would like everyone to look at the IRS interactive website together before writing up a recommendation. Laurie discussed the benefits of doing this when the group could be together. It was decided to work on this issue at the next face-to-face meeting.

New Issues
Although the issue subcommittee did not have a chance to prioritize the new issues, it was decided that since there were only two new issues, the entire panel would work them today.

Issue #2059: Improve the menu system on the toll-free number to make it more user friendly and have the ability to talk to the same person.

Many of the other committees are working on the IRS toll-free assistance number issue. By consensus, it was decided that the Area 7 committee did not want to duplicate efforts and to pass this issue on to the committees working on this issue. Cheyanna will talk to the committee chair about taking this issue. Mary will follow up with the committee analysts.

Issue #2289: Have the VITA sites operational in August and October for two weeks to account for extensions

It was decided that since VITA sites are not run by IRS employees but by volunteer basis, it is not up to the IRS to decide when they would be operational. Charles, in his capacity of working with recruiting VITA volunteers, will take this issue to see if VITA sites would have any interest to open these times up for those in need of assistance due to an extension. Mary will research to see if the IRS has any jurisdiction on VITA sites.

Face-to-Face Meetings
The committee discussed possible outreach opportunities to partner a business meeting with. Possible partnership opportunities include VITA sites, Small Business Organizations, public activities such as county fairs, IRS workshops etc.

Laurie discussed a Small Business event on March 12 th that the Taxpayer Advocate Service is going to participate in. The committee decided that this event would be good for the committee to participate in. Laurie will get more information about this event and report back at the next meeting.

The second face-to-face meeting will be in San Francisco in May.

Outreach and Marketing Materials
Judi discussed the strategy that the Ad Hoc committee was working on. Laurie is working on a talking points paper to do outreaches. It was decided that the committee would work on this and share this document with the Ad Hoc committee.

Other Committee Business
Cheyanna asked the members that were not able to attend the annual meeting to pick a subcommittee to work on. Charles choose to stay with the Adult Education Subcommittee and Curtis choose the annual report subcommittee.

Individual Outreach Goals: Cheyanna asked those members not in attendance to make an individual goal for Outreach. Charles will promote TAP in his VITA committee. He will do one outreach a quarter. Curtis will do one outreach a quarter.

Cheyanna asked if there was any other business to be discussed. No other business.

Public Comments
No comments from the public.

Closing and Assessment
Assessments: The meeting was quick and productive. The next meeting will be a teleconference on December 2, 2003 at 9am. Cheyenna adjourned the meeting.