Area 7 Committee Meeting Minutes

January 6, 2004
Teleconference 9 am to 10:00 am

Attendees:

• Curtis Feese
• James Griffin
• Cheyanna Jaffke, Area 7 Chair
• Chris Lowe
• David Robinson
• Laurie Keleman, Designated Federal Official
• Judi Nicholas, TAP Manager
• Mary O'Brien, Program Analyst

Members Not Present:

• Howard Perkins
• Charles Taylor

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.

Joint Committee Report Out
Cheyanna gave a brief synopsis of the last joint committee meeting. Bernie Coston has joined the Taxpayer Advocacy Panel as the new TAP Director. Sandy Mcquin will return to her role as TAP Manager. Cheyanna announced that there will be funding for one face-to-face meeting. The committee will discuss how to use this time later in the agenda.

Pending Issues

Adult Education
This issue will be discussed at the next meeting when Charles is here to report.

Compound /Complex Interest versus Simple Interest
By consensus it was decided that since this issue was more legislative in nature, that the panel would drop this issue.

Tax Fraud
Jim discussed his concern about a high boiler operation that he has heard about that is hurting many innocent taxpayers. He asked the committee if it wouldn't be a good idea to investigate in depth this organization. Judi discussed the problem with IRS disclosure as well as sticking to the mission of this panel. The committee decided to focus on the bigger issues of tax fraud and how it impacts taxpayers. Mary will get information to Jim about what the IRS does to educate taxpayers about tax fraud. Jim will report out at the next committee meeting.

Installment Agreement
Mary will get the results from the focus group that participated in giving feedback to the draft of the new website. This issue will be discussed in greater detail at the face-to-face meeting.

New Issues
One new issue was discussed.

Issue # : Millions of dollars of uncollected FICA money from Registered Representatives in the Securities Industry. The problem is that it is required that these representatives are classified as independent contractors but should be reclassified as employees.

It was discussed that there is a process in the IRS for a person to get a determination from the IRS on the status of classification of employee or independent contractor. The process is started with the completion for Form SS-8. The person who gave this suggestion had already gone through this process and was denied the employee classification and had been through the appeal process. By consensus it was decided that this was a legal issue instead of a customer service issue and not in the scope of this committee. The issue was dropped.

Face-to-Face Meetings
The committee discussed that since there would be only one face-to-face meeting that the issue is how to best utilize this time. It was discussed that March might be too soon to develop an agenda to maximize results. By consensus, the committee decided to target either June or July in the Oakland area to coincide with a partnering event with small business taxpayers. This will be discussed at the next teleconference.

Action Item: The staff will find the possible Bay Area outreach events for the committee to participate in.

Action Item: Each committee member will be prepared to discuss what items should be on the face-to-face agenda at the next teleconference. This includes what issues the committee would like to work on in preparation for this meeting.

Outreach and Marketing Materials
The committee discussed the outreach and marketing materials the Ad Hoc committee prepared. The idea of a script to help during outreaches was discussed. It was decided that Laurie would still work on some talking points for this effort.

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

Public Comments
No comments from the public.

Closing and Assessment
The next meeting will be a teleconference on February 3, 2004 at 9am. Cheyenna adjourned the meeting.