EITC Issue Committee Meeting Minutes
April 17-18, 2008
Face to Face Meeting
401 W. Peachtree St. NW
Atlanta, GA 30308-3510

Friday, April 17, 2008
Saturday, April 18, 2008

Program Owner

• Holland, Debra

Designated Federal Official

• Morizio, Louis

Committee Members Present

• Birge, Eileen
• Cooper, Dale
• Jonathan, Sabby
• Leggett, John
• Patterson, Robert
• Tanna, Wayne
• Verwiel, John
• Widmer, Harris

Committee Members Absent

• Cecchi, Emilio
• Wernz, Stanley

TAP Staff

• Jenkins, Audrey
• Odom, Meredith

Other Attendees

• Coston, Bernie
• Hill, Sandra
• O’Brien, Mary

Friday, April 17, 2008

Welcome/Announcements/Review Agenda
John Verwiel welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked the TAP Director, Bernie Coston and EITC Office, Debra Holland, Mary O’Brien and Sandra Hill for attending the meeting.

Roll Call
Quorum Met

Joint Committee Report
John Verwiel informed everyone that TAP Recruitment period closes on April 29th.  The final selection of panel members will go through Coston and Olson before being announced.  There is a Town Hall Meeting in Springfield.  Stimulus Payments will begin to go out May 2, 2008 for direct deposit recipients. Verwiel reminded everyone that the role of the Joint Committee is to support the IRS to the best of its ability.

National Office Update
Coston informed everyone that Odom has been selected as a Jr. Analyst.  This position will work with the current Analyst supporting the committees.  This gives the support staff a bridge into a technical position.  Patti Robb was selected in the Milwaukee office, Gloria Powers in the Florida office and Nina Pang in the Seattle office.  The Senior and Budget Analyst positions have also been filled and the appointees are waiting on release dates from the Managers.  Coston is in the process of hiring a Database Analyst.  Foley an Analyst from the Milwaukee office has been selected to work in the EITC Office.  Inez DeJesus, an Analyst from the Florida office will retire in May after 16yrs of service.

To date there are over 370 applications. There are no applicants from Hawaii as of yet.  There was an article in the Wall Street Journal that was very successful in recruitment. In addition this year, Morizio and staff placed an article in the El Dario which is the largest Hispanic publication paper in the US.

There is a committee that was established to work on the TAP Annual report. Members have been working hard and Coston encourages members to get involved.  This year’s report is smaller but it will contain pictures and graphs and tells more about TAP, the committees and success stories.  It is scheduled to completed May.

The Commissioner asked for all dates and location of all of TAP’s face to face meetings to possibly attend.

Filing season went well this year.

Coston encourages members to provide suggestions to the EITC Office and reminds them that TAP is one of many options that the EITC Office used for input and improvement.

The TAP program is going through a situation with budget but each member will have the opportunity to attend their Area and Issue face to face meetings.

EITC Overview
Holland is asking for all comments and suggestions from the committee in reference to EITC.  The EITC Office needs help understanding how to use service to get to compliance.  Last years surveys will be reviewed thoroughly.  Holland reminds members that they should be educated on EITC but not represent the IRS.  They should only provide feedback and input on issues.

This year’s filing season was a huge success.  There were some challenges.  The AMT required programming of systems to accept some types of returns.  People worked late and on weekends.  This required programming and innovative thinking.

The Economic Stimulus is a huge challenge for the IRS but the issuance of checks will be processed quickly.

This year was the second year of having the EITC Awareness Day which focuses attention on EITC.  There was a lot of coverage this year.  Holland suggests having a TAP member sit in on the planning of EITC awareness day. A satellite Media Tour will be done by Holland and David Williams.  12,000 radio stations spread the word on EITC.  Members are encouraged to participate on the outreach side and not the compliance side of EITC

The IRS doesn’t have an oversight of RAL’s.  Olson is trying to get rid of RAL’s

The error rate for 2009 will be reported on a system from the computer error rate for 2006. 23% if EITC is paid in error. There is a 75% - 80% EITC participation rate.  The EITC Office, SPEC and other organizations are getting the word out about the EITC.  To qualify for EITC you must have a valid SSN.  There are a lot of people that do have the SSN but don’t have high English skills.  There has also been a problem with 2 returns being filed with the same SSN which is making identity theft a challenge.

Stakeholder Engagement/Systems Operations
O’Brien informed the TAP members that the EITC staff is expanding.  Foley a former TAP Analyst will now be working in the EITC office.

Hill informed the TAP members that they are looking to contract in other functions of the IRS such as Congressional Liaison, Multilingual, SPEC, and TAS to try to reduce the error rate of EITC.  Tax Forums are also a source of getting the word out about EITC. There are examples to improve audit tools that were developed to query or pull cases.  80% of these returns are prepared by preparers.

2008 EITC Assignment
Web Based Tools
The project will focus on the following questions:

1. Are there any inconsistencies found on irs.gov and eitcfortaxpreparers.com?
2. What are the duplications found on irs.gov and eitcfortaxpreparers.com?
3. Given the findings of focus groups and the limitations of irs.gov, what should be housed on irs.gov versus toolkit?
4. What are the gaps in information that need to be developed for either irs.gov or eitcfortaxpreparers.com?
5. How should irs.gov be structured?
6. What recommendations would you have for search functionality?
7. If we were to build a new platform for irs.gov what recommendations would you make?

Training/Education
Given that EITC project office plans on writing a training module for tax professionals within the next 2 years, the project will focus on the following questions

1. What recommendations would you make on development requirements? i.e.
1. What types of information should the module focus on?
2. Length of the module
3. Should the module be interactive
4. Where do we house the module
5. Should it be scored and if so what does feedback to the tax professional look like and what should the record retention be
6. Do we give CPE credit
7. Etc.

2. What recommendations would you make to market this module and other IRS tools for tax professionals?

Adhoc
EITC Day

• Increase participation for TAP members and LITC
• Arrange coordination between the TAP and LITC Program Offices
• Coordinate and expand these as topic in both the TAP and LITC annual meetings

Develop Web-base tools for the LITC to use when discussing EITC during workshops

Translate the SPEC EITC handouts and EITC Web-based tools into several languages

Marketing EITC ideas to the LITC, ESL and TAP communities.

Questions/Comments
Jenkins provided the member with room assignments for subcommittee breakouts.

Saturday, April 18, 2008

Taxpayer Advocacy Panel
EITC Committee Meeting Agenda
Sheraton Atlanta Hotel
Atlanta, Georgia  30303
Day 2 – Macon Room

Meeting Opening
Verwiel opened the meeting welcoming members and staff

Roll Call
Quorum met

Subcommittee Report Out
Web Based Tools – Chair, Dale Cooper
The subcommittee reviewed the website and made some suggestions to help paid preparers to navigate to acquire the information they need to prepare the return. The suggestions will be summarized and sent to the full committee prior to the June meeting.

Training/Education – Chair, Robert Patterson
The subcommittee developed a training/education module and suggested that it is made available, online, CD, hardcopy as well as distributed to Universities to be included in the Tax curriculum. An actual draft of the module will be sent to the full committee prior to the June meeting.

Adhoc – Chair, Eileen Birge
The subcommittee developed a one sheet reference tool “EITC on a Page” which could be used by anyone preparing an EITC return. They also developed proposals for LITC, TAP and VITA. All proposals will be drafted and forwarded to the full committee prior to the June meeting.