Taxpayer Advocacy Panel (TAP)
Joint Committee Teleconference Minutes
Wednesday, March 7, 2007 - 1 p.m. ET

Designated Federal Official
Bernie Coston, TAP Director

Members Present
J. T. Wright, TAP Chair
Robert Meyers, TAP Vice-chair
Bill Bly, Chair, Burden Reduction
Paul Duquette, Chair, VITA
Jerald Fireman, Chair, TAC Committee
Tom Karwin, Chair, Communication
Merijane (M J) Lee, Chair, AdHoc
Maryann Motza, Chair, Area 6
Hank Mosler, Chair, Area 3
Ferd Schneider, Chair, Area 4
Max Scott, Chair, Notices Committee
Lynwood Sinnamon, Chair, Area 2
Stanley Wernz, Chair, EITC
Wayne Whitehead, Chair, Area 7
Ken Wright, Chair, Area 5
Bruce Zgoda, Vice-chair, TAC Committee

Members Absent
Dorothy Havey, Chair, Area 1

Staff Present
Steve Berkey, acting TAP Manager
Barbara Toy, Program Analyst
Patti Robb, Note Taker
Sandra Ramirez, TAP Manager
Judi Nicholas, TAP Manager

Guests:
Kimberly Brown, Area 2
Gil Yanuck, Area 7
Ben Chapman, Area 2
Marilyn Clapp, Area 6
Harvey Epstein, Area 1
Hal Gadon, Area 1
Ed Uhrig, Area 6

JT Wright welcomed everyone and reviewed agenda. 

Quorum met. 

Bernie Coston received news that the Taxpayer Advocacy Panel’s (TAP) budget has been approved and TAP will be able to fund everything needed—the face-to-face meetings, the town halls, outreaches, and the tax forums.  Coston attended the Brooklyn town hall meeting last night, Tuesday, March 6, 2007.  Dorothy Havey presided over the meeting which was held at Brooklyn Borough Hall.  It was a great setting and about 35-40 people attended. The National Taxpayer Advocate (NTA), Nina Olson, talked about the tax gap, confusion on compliance, how the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) needs to have more presence in communities and private debt collection.  Members from both Areas 1 and 2 supported the town hall meeting. 

Steve Berkey will be sending out an email with a link to the new TAP to staff and members of the Communication Committee to test this year’s on-line application. Members of the Joint Committee who are interested in testing the application should let Steve Berkey know. The testing period is Friday, March 16 (close of business) through Tuesday, March 20 at Noon. 

Vision Statement

“Citizen Volunteers, Valued for Improving IRS Services”
One of the problems TAP has suffered is not being known internally to the IRS as well as externally to the public.  In addition, TAP is not valued for its input and people do not know what TAP is, what it does or who it serves.  This new vision statement remains true to our mission statement and charter.  Coston asked for comments on the statement.  J.T. Wright said the statement is simple but to the point.  Jerry Fireman asked why the word citizen was used and not just volunteers.  For two reasons, first, the panel was originally known as the Citizen Advocacy Panel and second members are required to be a citizen.  Next steps, will be to develop performance measures and a way to market TAP to meet the vision both internally and externally.  The previous statement used the word voice but Coston’s thought is that the voice portion will come with being valued.  Wright said the more he reads the statement, the better he likes it.  A mission statement needs to be brief enough that both the mission and vision statements can be remembered easily. 

Wright said Tom Karwin will explain how chairs should be using the communication strategy.  Karwin said the Communication Committee was created and given responsibility to pursue variety of communication tasks.  The strategy was developed to guide the committee in this responsibility.  The committee listed all the communication tasks, identified them as internal or external and listed the responsible party for those tasks.  The Internal and External Communication subcommittees are drawing up work plans for those tasks.  Many tasks are the responsibility of the Communication Committee, some are the responsibility of the Joint Committee and there are some which are clearly the responsibility of the area.  The responsible party first reviews the list and then sets the priority level for the assigned strategies.  Next each area committee has to develop a work plan.  Wright asked how often the area committee would review the strategy.  Karwin replied that each committee decides how often to review on their own.  Bob Meyers said that developing the strategy helped the Communication Committee understand and identify its role of the committee within TAP.  The Communication Committee is relatively new in the organization and this helped in defining the role of the Committee and the roles of the other committees and staff.  TAP identified a long list of communication items that are desirable so committee had to set priorities to focus on the most important.  Wright said that since the strategy items in this document have been identified as relatively important tasks for TAP to accomplish, the responsible parties need to review and develop a work plan.  MaryAnn Motza added that TAP is not well known or valued within the organization or externally which gets back to the value of the vision statement.  The Communication Committee was formed to close that gap.  Wright said that this is a management tool to help chairs stay focused so TAP’s communication efforts have maximum impact and accomplish its goals.  Karwin said the next part is to establish the measures to determine if TAP is meeting its goals. 
ACTION:  The area chairs need to review the Communication Strategy, set priorities and develop a work plan to accomplish the strategies during the year. 

Two recommendations were received during the month but not prior to the 15th.  The Quality Review Committee is meeting on the March 21st.  If the referrals don’t need to be substantially changed, they will be on the agenda for the April 4th meeting.  Wright commended the team for volunteering and their organizing efforts.

The previous Joint Committee decided to include only active issues on the List of TAP issues report.  A separate report is run showing the issues in the parking lot.  These reports are found on TAPSpace in List of TAP Issues folder in the reading room.  The list of TAP Issues is the active issues from all area and issue committees; the parking lot report listed in this folder is also for all area and issue committees.  (Please note that area committees and some issue committees receive a List of TAP Issue report from their program analyst which lists both the active and parking lot issues.  Both statuses are on this report to help the committee prioritize their work load). 

Had a report like this at one time but several years ago a Joint Committee subcommittee looked at all the TAP reports; decided that some were repetitive and combined the reports into the Recommendation Status Summary Report.  Training on the use of this report is scheduled – for March 28 at Noon ET or April 11 at Noon ET.  It is asked that members hold off with suggestions on improving the report until after the training.  The Vice-chairs will also be encouraged to attend this training.  This is two separate sessions, you do not need to attend both but choose one or the other. 
ACTION:  Toy will send out an email to the chairs, vice-chairs and staff to see who will be attending each training session.

Wright said that TAP does need a tool to follow various responses from the IRS.  Hank Mosler has developed a system for tracking Area 3’s issue which may be useful for tracking the Joint Committee recommendations as well.  However, again, it was asked that members wait until after the training to make suggestions on improving the current report. 

Coston said that TAP is looking at ways to do a better job on building the Joint Committee agendas and that is why this question was added to the Meeting Satisfaction Survey

TAP wants some continuity as far as hosting a town hall meeting.  To do this, area committee members and staff hold conference calls to build the agenda and discuss roles.  Dorothy Havey did a fantastic job as moderator of the first town hall held in Brooklyn. Havey used the template based on Ferd Schneider’s from the town hall last year.  It is used as a model and customized for each town hall.  The role of members that volunteer is to host the town hall, to inform the audience of TAP’s success stories and to perform outreach.  Town hall meetings are an excellent way to do outreach by mingling with people as they come in and informing them of TAP’s mission and that TAP is looking for new members.  Members also help conduct the focus groups. 

Wright suggested another value in training members on how to conduct a town hall meeting could be that members could hold town hall meetings locally which could be done on a smaller scale without inviting the NTA or Coston.  This type of outreach reinforces to taxpayers that there is a group looking to improve the IRS.

Wright’s vision is that the area committees will submit such quality issues that the Quality Review Team and the Joint Committee would not have to do much work.  The Joint Committee referrals have the names of the authors or members of the subcommittee that developed the referral on the form.  He suggested that Joint Committee members who have questions about the referral or who need additional clarification contact the authors prior to the Joint Committee meeting.  Wernz participates on some boards and committees that do business this way regularly by email and suggested establishing a process that will ensure all members receive each other comments.  Paul Duquette said that the VITA Committee has used this process by using some method to highlight changes in a word document which is sent back to Toy, the analyst for the committee, to compile and or distribute as needed.  He added that the Joint Committee spends a lot of time at meetings clarifying the issue rather than discussing its merits.  It was noted that Word has a review feature that tracks changes and comments.  Toy said that as TAP is a federal advisory committee; it is subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA).  This means the issues must be discussed and decisions made at a meeting that is open to the public.  The email discussions can be used to correct spelling and grammar and also to ask questions that clarify the understanding of the issue but should not be used to discuss the merits of the proposal.  Wright says the process is still valuable because the Joint Committee spends a considerable amount of time to effect understanding.  If every member of the Joint Committee came to the meeting ready to discuss the issues, the committee would save a lot of time and leave more time to discuss pertinent issues.  It is also frustrating for members to have to spend time correcting grammar and spelling which distracts from the discussion on the substance of the issue.  Motza said that as an area or subcommittee is working the issue, the members gain an understanding of the issue which is not also conveyed in the written word.  Lyn Sinnamon said he preferred that questions regarding the referral be sent to a single point in the area rather than to the authors and suggested the area’s quality review committee.  Motza agreed with Sinnamon.
ACTION:  Wright and Meyers will develop a process for discussing Joint Committee referrals via email prior to the meeting and document the process.

ACTION:  All members should forward any issues they believe should be brought up to the Commissioner to Wright and Meyers by March 28, 2007. 
ACTION:  Wright and Meyers will put information together and present to the committee at the April 4th Joint Committee meeting. 

Discussed earlier.

The February 7, 2007 Joint Committee minutes were approved by consensus.
DECISION:  The Joint Committee reached consensus on approving the February 7, 2007 Joint Committee minutes

Wright said this item will be removed since it was agreed that success stories should be sent to all members via email prior to the Joint Committee teleconference.  Sinnamon wanted to thank the four Area 2 members that were out doing the Taxpayer Assistance Center (TAC) surveys in inclement weather.  The thank you was extended to all members who volunteered to do the TAC surveys and for those who will do the future surveys.

Reminder that the Joint Committee face to face meeting is June 24-26, 2007.  Staff is working on costing out cities.  For now, put the dates for the full time on your calendar.  Actual meeting times will be discussed and on the agenda for the April meeting and locations will be discussed.  It is TAP policy that vice-chairs should be asked to act as proxy for the chairs if they cannot attend either a teleconference or face-to-face meeting.  If the vice-chair cannot act as proxy, the chair should pick another committee member to act.
ACTION:  A discussion of the Joint Committee face-to-face meeting will be added to the April 4th Joint Committee meeting.

Meyers asked if the committee preferred written meeting assessments rather than the verbal assessments at the end of a meeting.  The preference is for the written assessment.
ACTION:  Toy will send out the Joint Committee meeting survey after each meeting.

Mosler asked who owns the bio on TAPSpace.  There are several errors.  Motza replied that the Communication Committee is working on improving TAPSpace and this part is being revised by the vendor right now.  Individual members should be updating their own information but there will be some improvements that make it much easier including updating one’s issue committee assignment.  Berkey added that it is hoped the enhancements will be completed by mid April. 
ACTION:  Toy will put responses to issues on TAPSpace. 

Meeting Adjourned
Next Meeting is April 4, 2007, at 1 pm ET

• Consensus on approving the February 7, 2007 Joint Committee minutes

• A discussion of the Joint Committee face-to-face meeting will be added to the April 4th Joint Committee meeting
  
• All members should forward any issues they believe should be brought up to the Commissioner to Wright and Meyers by March 28, 2007. 
  
• The area chairs need to review the Communication Strategy, set priorities and develop a work plan to accomplish the strategies during the year.
  
• Toy will put responses to issues on TAPSpace
  
• Toy will send out an email to the chairs, vice-chairs and staff to see who will be attending each training session
  
• Toy will send out the Joint Committee meeting survey after each meeting.
  
• Wright and Meyers will develop a process for discussing Joint Committee referrals via email prior to the meeting and document the process.
  
• Wright and Meyers will put information together and present to the committee at the April 4th Joint Committee meeting. 

• The Areas 1. 3. and 4 chairs will get together today and discuss the possibility of combining #3734, #3758, # 3908, Downloadable Forms, and #3705, OCR Forms Availability.  The issue will be addressed again later in the meeting. (10/12-14/2006) 
• TAP will not have a formal policy on setting the frequency of full committee and subcommittee meetings; however, committees need to be flexible and not meet if there are no decisions that need to be made or work to be done.  (10/12-14/2006) 
• When a committee receives information about a problem that IRS needs to be aware of quickly such as an incorrect link on its website, the committee should draft a letter following the format for referrals as closely as possible.  The paragraph will be reviewed by the Joint Committee and submitted, if approved, to the IRS under the TAP Chair’s signature.  (10/12-14/2006)
• Communication Strategy approved as presented.  (11/01/2006)
• Success stories should be sent to all members via email prior to the Joint Committee teleconference.  (02/07/2007)
• Consensus to elevate Area 1 #3934, Form 8453 Usage Reduction with minor grammatical changes.  (02/07/2007)
• Consensus to elevate Area 1 #3927 Form 8300 e-filing Capability with minor grammatical changes.  (02/07/2007)
• Consensus to elevate Area 1 #3926 Form 8300 Filing Instructions with minor grammatical changes.  (02/07/2007)
• Consensus to elevate Area 1 #3334, Form 1127 Revision.  (02/07/2007)
• Consensus to elevate Area 6 #3233, Estimated Tax Payments Rules for Self-employed Taxpayers.  (02/07/2007)

• J. T Wright will share the area’s outreach reporting template with the Communication Committee by sending to Judi Nicholas.
• Toy will include only the active issues in the List of TAP Issues report but also run a list of issues in the parking lot by date received.
• Sandra Ramirez will ask Area 1 to prepare a response to IRS regarding the Schedule D Line for Carryover and bring the response back to the Joint Committee for approval
• Any one who finds grammatical errors in the Joint Committee pre-read materials such as minutes and referrals should send the suggested corrections to Barbara Toy.  (02/07/2007)