Taxpayer Advocacy Panel (TAP)
Joint Committee Teleconference Minutes
Wednesday, April 2, 2008 - 2 p.m. ET

Designated Federal Official:
Bernie Coston, TAP Director

Members Present:
Hank Mosler, TAP Chair
MJ Lee, TAP Vice Chair
Shaun Barry, Chair, Area 1
Ben Chapman, Chair, Area 2
Dale Cooper, Chair, Area 3
Kenneth Wright, Chair, Area 5
Milissa Bensen, for Area 6
Charles Davidson, Chair, Area 7
Bruce Zgoda, Chair, Burden Reduction
Mark Paris, Chair, Communication
John Verwiel, Chair, EITC
Joe Shields, Chair, Area 6
Lee Stieger, Chair, Notices
Stan Wernz, Chair, Area 4
Wayne Whitehead, Chair, TAC

Members Absent:
Al Rodriguez, Chair, Forms and Pubs
Rick Rousseau, Chair, VITA

Staff Present:
Barbara Foley, Program Analyst
Patti Robb, Note Taker
Trish DeTimmerman, Acting TAP Manager
Nancy Ferree, TAP Manager
Judi Nicholas, TAP Manager
Inez DeJesus, Program Analyst
Mary Ann Delzer, Program Analyst
Sallie Chavez, Program Analyst
Susan Gilbert, Senior Program Analyst

Visitors:
Robert Yandow, Panel Member
Howard Margulies, Panel Member
Jeff Kennedy, Panel Member
Kimberly Brown, Panel Member

Hank Mosler welcomed everyone.

Quorum met.

See Attachment 1 for report.  This report has also been posted to TAPSpace.  Note, the next Town Hall Meeting will be May 6, not May 1.

See attachment 2 for full report.  Barbara Foley sent out a complete list of issues.  Mosler asked that everyone check the report for accuracy and area chairs should set a target date for issue completion and elevation to the Joint Committee (JC).  Your analyst should update the database with the target date and a new report will be run.  If you have any suggestions for further improvement to this report, please forward them to Foley and Mosler.

The March minutes were approved as submitted.

Kenneth Wright said participation was down at the last meeting.  He added that if all members do participate, it will add to the length of the meeting, so we should collect the quality of participation vs. the quantity.

We are on target and should exceed the amount of applications received last year.  The staff started sending email messages about recruitment to employers.  However, one of the email recipients called the office to find out if the email message was legitimate (due to the phishing scams out there).  Bernie Coston pointed out that not one paper application has been received to date.  He also added that we are working on getting a blurb in the Wall Street Journal and that tends to create a lot of activity. 

Wayne Whitehead said the process is a little different this year.  When an issue comes forward for review by the quality review committee, it also gets posted to TAPSpace for all JC members to look at.  We will only discuss the merit of the issue from now on; not grammar or punctuation. 

The Quality Review team: Wayne Whitehead, lead, Hank Mosler, Kenneth Wright, Kelly Wingard and Josefina Villarreal.  Both Villarreal and Wingard are first year members and will provide continuity on this committee. 

• #4243, Notice of Deficiency

This issue came Panel Member Pat Bryant from an Low Income Taxpayer Clinic (LITC) site.  She observed Taxpayer’s are signing Form 4089, Notice of Deficiency-Waiver, without fully understanding that they are agreeing to the assessment as presented, as well as agreeing to not petition the Tax Court.  We do not know the number of people who were impacted by this issue; Mary Ann Delzer is working on getting the numbers.  Wright felt this would not add to the merit of the recommendation but Ben Chapman felt it was premature to send this recommendation forward without that information.  Mosler said the issue will be put on hold until the next meeting so the numbers can be added.  He then asked if the recommendation checklist was completed.  It should be completed and elevated to the JC with each recommendation.  (This checklist available in electronic format soon.)
ACTION:  Hold Issue # 4243 until May meeting.

• #4484, Notice 163

This issue is regarding the title on the Notice CP 163.  It should better reflect what the notice actually is.  It's called an annual reminder notice in the internal materials, but does not say that on the notice, so taxpayers think they are back in collection status.  The notice begins with the phrase “Past Due Tax Statement,” which can lead a taxpayer to believe that the annual reminder is a new attempt by the IRS to collect the balance due instead of the required annual reminder of the CNC status.  The current title is rather misleading. 

Wright said there is a proposal to have a website set up so taxpayers can go online to look at what they owe.  He said these annual notices are sent out as required by law.
DECISION:  Consensus to elevate issue #4484, Notice 163.

Mosler said if there are sufficient agenda items, the meeting will start on Thursday morning, June 19, and end at noon on Saturday, June 21.  We will be staying and meeting at the Crowne Plaza in Clayton, MO.  It is a suburb of St. Louis. 

Coston asked the JC members to look over the proposed agenda topics carefully so we can finalize it.  Once the agenda items are identified, we will start setting times.

Whitehead suggested adding the annual report to the agenda.  Then we can put together a team to start identifying information to go into the 2008 report. 

Coston said we need to determine the best way to move forward with the election of TAP Chair, Vice-chair, and the area and issue chairs; to make the transition process transparent to the rest of the panel members.  We need to look at ways to improve the annual business meeting itself.  We also need to look at improving the chair training process and merging the it with the annual meeting.  This is partly due to budget and partly due to the difficulty in having to travel in December and then again in January.

• Reminder of Where to send

Foley said the new monthly report templates will be coming out soon.  The submission process was changed during the last JC call.  They are due to your manager and analyst by the 10th of each month.  They will forward to the JC analyst for compiling.  The manager should carbon copy the chair when they forward the report to the JC analyst (in case there are any changes made). 

• Area 2 Feedback

Ben Chapman said the second Town Hall meeting was held in Durham, NC.  There were about ten people from the public there.  Most of them were practitioners or representatives of a LITC, a volunteer organization who had a lot to say about Refund Anticipation Loans (RAL).  We also had a state government worker who brought language issues.  It was a small meeting but everyone was very vocal, so it was a very good meeting.  Chapman suggested getting input from local people to identify a location and a good date.  The date chosen was during the collegiate basketball playoffs and it was also spring break.  He also felt the location was not in a very good part of town.  It was also on March 13 which is two days before corporate returns are due so many practitioners were unable to attend.  He added that he did an interview which was televised on the local cable station every hour on the hour the whole day of the meeting.  The planning tool used for last year’s Omaha Town Hall meeting was used for this meeting and it worked very well. 

• Area 4 Planning Update

Trish DeTimmerman said four TAP members will be in attendance at the next Town Hall meeting planned for Tuesday, May 6, at the Trotter Center in Springfield, IL.  There have been planning calls on a weekly basis for the past month.  Mary Ann Delzer has done a fabulous job of putting together all the logistics and we are right on target.  Wright said he will be sending out at least 150 letters to let people in the area know about the meeting.

• Update

The IRS is continuing to get information out to the public.  They conducted one Super Saturday nation-wide this past week to reach out to people who normally do not file taxes.  They were also there to answer questions people have about the stimulus package.  If a panel member works in a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) site they can provide information, otherwise please refer people to the IRS website or the Stimulus toll-free number – 1-866-234-2942. 

Joe Shields said the stimulus package is the bulk of the questions he gets asked at outreaches, VITA sites, and the LITCs. 

Ben Chapman said he did an extensive telephone interview and had the article published in The Record in New Jersey which is the second largest newspaper in NJ.  He received he received several calls as a result. 

Mosler reminded everyone that they need to take pictures at their face-to-face meetings so we can use them in the annual report.

No comments. 

MJ Lee said the meeting went great and it was jam-packed.  She congratulated Wernz and the Area 4 Committee for elevating the first recommendation to the JC.  She also thanked Whitehead for his guidance on quality review. 

Coston announced that Barbara Foley will be moving on to a new position at the end of April and he thanked her for all her hard work. 

Next Meeting:  Wednesday May 7, 2008, 2 p.m. ET

DECISIONS:

• Consensus to elevate issue #4484, Notice 163
• Hold Issue # 4243 until May meeting

ACTIONS:

All Chairs:

• Look over the proposed topics carefully so we can finalize June’s face-to-face agenda.