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
Stan Wernz, Chair, Area 4
Kenneth Wright, Chair, Area 5
Joe Shields, Chair, Area 6
Charles Davidson, Chair, Area 7
Bruce Zgoda, Chair, Burden Reduction
Mark Paris, Chair, Communication
John Verwiel, Chair, EITC
Lee Stieger, Chair, Notices
Wayne Whitehead, Chair, TAC
Rich Rousseau, Chair, VITA

Members Absent

Staff Present
Steve Berkey, Senior Program Analyst
Patti Robb, Note Taker
Susan Gilbert, Acting TAP Manager
Nancy Ferree, TAP Manager
Judi Nicholas, TAP Manager
Louis Morizio, TAP Manager

Visitors:
Joe Zelle, Director, Field Systemic Advocacy
Al Rodriguez, Chair, Forms and Pubs

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Hank welcomed everyone to the meeting. 

Minor changes to the minutes – Charles Davidson was on the call.  Minutes approved with minor changes.

See National Office Update.
Bernie Coston announced the finance board met and gave TAP more money for travel.  This money is earmarked for tax forums.  TAP will attend three tax forums this year; Orlando, FL, New York, NY, and Las Vegas, NV. 

Dale Cooper mentioned that the Southeastern County Practitioners are having a meeting in Atlanta, GA and invited TAP to attend at no cost.  TAP and TAS will be represented. 

Coston met with National Taxpayer Advocate (NTA) Nina Olson and they discussed TAP’s budgetary needs for 2010.  He will write up a proposal to request more money since the cost of travel has increased and we have more staff on board. 

Ben Chapman said that sometimes it is a burden on the panel members (when attending a face-to-face meeting) to travel from the hotel to a federal locality.  Steve Berkey responded that there are very strict guidelines as to how offsite meetings are arranged.  We have to provide justification as to why we are meeting in a hotel or other location rather than a federal building.  Coston added that sometimes it’s better if the committee meets in an IRS facility due to IRS personnel accessibility, plus the staff has online availability and can make copies if needed. 

John Verwiel suggested combining area/issue/or the JC meeting.  It would cut down on travel costs and hotel costs.  The staff will do some analysis of these suggestions to see if it would be viable.
 
A new budget analyst will be reporting for duty in Washington, D.C., on Monday, June 23, 2008.  This will relieve Steve Berkey of some of his duties.  We interviewed for a Milwaukee manager last week and Coston met with Olson and got approval for his selection.  Hopefully he will be on board by the end of July.  We received applications for the database analyst position and are moving forward.  Inez DeJesus, Program Analyst in Plantation, FL, will officially be retiring on Friday, June 20.  TAP announced the analyst position to replace both DeJesus and Barb Foley (Milwaukee), as well as the secretarial positions for Brooklyn and Washington, D.C. 

There were 620 applications for the 38 available positions.  Coston thanked everyone for their help in doing the interviews for these positions.  A lot of outreach was done during recruitment and resulted in a 61% increase in applicants.  We have a deeper alternate list this year too.  We have found that some alternates are hesitant to join the panel as a regular member in the middle of the year and opt to wait until the annual meeting to join.  When an alternate comes on, they come on with the usual three year term.  We cannot extend that due to the charter which states “three year term.”  The managers were encouraged to invite their alternates to join the monthly conference calls as a member of the public.  Judi Nicholas suggested letting the alternates know the time and date of the calls each month. 

The annual meeting will be held in the Sheraton Hotel in Arlington, VA, the first week in December.

See TAP Chair Report.
All face-to-face meetings have been completed this year.  Please review the “special projects year-to-date” section and let Mosler know if anything is missing.

The next JC face-to-face meeting is scheduled for October 2-4, 2008, location to be determined.
ACTION:  Robb will do a cost comparison for Atlanta, Chicago, and Las Vegas.

This was a roundtable session to identify meeting issues and expectations for the current meeting. It will be again reviewed at the end of the meeting.

• two full days – test the length actually needed.  some leave early, some come late
• What are fellow chairs doing (sharing)
• 90% issue elevation
• working JC meeting at annual meeting and January meeting
• better understanding of the process to elevate area issues
• ideas for Area 1
• would like to see the annual meeting seriously revamped – integration of new members into TAP
• Issue committee elevation process
• breaks
• have a chair & chair elect to allow for good transition
• Use non-returning chairs to train new members – use outgoing members for surveys
• screening of issues – how do you screen them so you know what is acceptable to pursue (what will IRS consider)
• ranking of potential panel members – what are we trying to accomplish with the ranking system – understand what is expected  (this would be a good topic to discuss at the October meeting)
• new members productive sooner
• get to know Louis better
• improving the process of the creation and distribution of the annual report
• elevating tax forms and pubs issues
• clarifying the process of how we classify, count, track elevated issues and how to measure (database)

Area 1 has thirty-seven issues in the works or already worked,  Six have been elevated and eleven have been closed.  Many members have been very busy doing outreach and that has resulted in fantastic results.  Two issues will be looked at the by the JC today.  Identity theft is a huge issue that Area 1 is interested in working.  There are four basic types:

1. Social Security Number theft or misuse
2. fraudulent returns/refunds
3. residual effect of consumer-oriented identity theft
4. pfishing

Area 2 got off to a slow start this year.  Four of their issues that dealt with forms and pubs were sent to the Forms & Pubs issue committee.  There are four active issues in the works, three more waiting in the parking lot and one issue will be presented to the JC today for elevation.  One of our issues was picked up off Systematic Management Advocacy System (SAMS) for immediate intervention.  There is one other issue that is active on SAMS and we think it is going to be picked up too.  We have nine new members and most of them are really stepping up by doing outreach and working on issues, although there are a couple members who do very little and contribute very little.  We built a very good agenda and had speakers from the NTA office, the LTA. etc., for our face-to-face meeting in Baltimore.  It was very informative and interesting.  Coston pointed out that you never know how many issues may be identified when you have speakers attend your meeting.  Chapman asked each member bring one issue to the face-to-face meeting.  Some brought more than one, some brought none.

We had our face-to-face meeting early this year (February).  It was a good thing because some members weren’t sure how to work the issues.  Some members are not very engaged and just don’t contribute very much and the chair does not have the time to baby-sit for these people.  Maybe we should think about replacing them.  We participated in a Congressional Liaison meeting and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) day.  A lot of issues identified had to be rejected because they were legislative.  We have not had any outside speakers attend our meeting yet.  We have Southeast County show coming up.  Cooper said he asked each of his members to participate in the new panel member interviews.  Three issues have been elevated to date and one more will be coming up soon. 

Area 4 has had good attendance except for the April 15 meeting.  Our face-to-face meeting was excellent.  There is one standing subcommittee to screen new issues.  The other subcommittees are in flux as issues are identified.  Two issues have been elevated and one has already been adopted by the IRS.  We are actively working ten issues.  Four of these issues will be elevated very shortly as they are being finalized now.  We asked members to select what issues they want to work on and most members selected several issues.  One member responded to the request for information on the Refund Anticipation Loans (RAL).  We have done 45 outreaches as of the end of April.  We actively promoted the TAP recruitment.  There was a town hall meeting on May 7, in Springfield, IL, with about 70 people in attendance. 

Area 5 is working on quite a few issues; ten of which are forms and pubs and they will have to be forwarded to that issue committee.  There are five other active issues that are being written up right now.  While at the town hall meeting in Springfield, IL, Nina Olson, National Taxpayer Advocate, specifically asked Wright to give her a copy of his write up on correspondence audits.   This issue is his top priority.  One member of our committee is blind and he is working on accessibility for the blind issues.  We are actively encouraging members to report their outreach.  Most of the good issues identified to date have come from practitioners.  The issues from the public tend to be more generic and personal.  The Area 5 face-to-face meeting was just held in San Antonio, TX.  Sherry Saucerman, Stakeholder Liaison, attended the meeting and it was an excellent meeting.  We also had a focus group as far as expectations from the new members and what the experienced members have done.  One thing that came out of this was a general feeling that the annual meeting needs to change. 

A great deal of our issues were dropped during our face-to-face meeting.  The Area 6 members are very good and really work hard.  Unfortunately, only five committee members are continuing; the rest are in their third year.  We dropped thirty-eight issues at the last meeting because they were legislative, statutory, or cost prohibitive, and some were already being worked by other committees.  One of our elevated issues was partially accepted.  Four issues are being elevated to the JC today.  There are still about twenty issues in the parking lot and we are working three or four issues actively; one of them may be dropped though.  Our committee thinks it is terrible that so many taxpayers have to pay a practitioner to do their taxes – and many of them are at or below the poverty level. 

People started slowly in Area 7 but have really gotten into gear since the face-to-face meeting in April.  We discarded many issues because they were not within our scope.  We have two subcommittees and they are each working between seven and ten issues at any time.  There are several issues that will be submitted for elevation to the JC in the near future.  We average about 50% outreach each month by different members.  We have done about 100 different outreaches.  Our members participated in the EITC awareness day, congressional liaison meetings, various fairs, and have also spoken to Mark Pursley, Wage & Investment, Project Director.

The area committees need to be careful when sending issues to the issue committees.  They have to be within the issue committee’s purview and they also have to be approved by the program owner.  The area committee staff will contact the issue committee staff who will talk to the program owner to ensure they are agreeable before accepting the issue. 

We also started out slow and just completed our face-to-face meeting in June.  We are looking at upgrading and improving improveIRS.org and TAPSpace.  We will do what we can immediately and will work on the other things until they can be done; it all hinges on the budget. The outreach mailer (tri-fold) was updated, approved, and is now available for use.  They will be printed and each office will get 500 copies with their respective address.  On another note, we changed the name of the Communication Committee to the Communications Committee.

We had our face-to-face meeting at the end of May.  We got off to a very slow start because the program owner did not give us any issues to work, however some good issues were identified during the May meeting.  One subcommittee is working aging issues.  Another subcommittee is working on two different projects

1. reducing the burden experienced when preparing the Schedule C, Profit or Loss from Business
2. reducing the burden involved with the Required Minimum Distribution of pensions

Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) – John Verwiel

EITC held our face-to-face meeting in April.  We completed one proposal which was seven pages long, but were encouraged to break it down to five proposals

1. VITA to increase participation
2. LITC
3. web based tools
4. training and education
5. EITC on a page

Notices – Lee Stieger

The committee has been quite active responding to assignments from last year.  We scored seventeen notices this year and still have several more to do.  We reviewed standards for Data Assessment Tool (DAT) scoring and reviewed stimulus publications.  We also expressed concern regarding the cost of sending stuffers with notices.  The program owners want us to get more involved with this issue.  We will make our recommendation and they said they will get back to us.  This is a new area and is an area where it will potentially save the IRS a lot of money; it is also an IRS initiative. 

The committee is still working on the forms assessment tool.  We did a PowerPoint presentation on “targeted and improved communications” and direct marketing.  Most of the responses received from our recommendations were favorable. 

Stieger added that TAP needs to look at better balancing in the committees.  Notices will be losing most of their experienced members; only three people will be continuing on to train the new members. 

Coston indicated we might consider doing some early recruitment; maybe approach members from other committees to see if they are interested and then start training them

The TAC Committee has been tasked with looking at the appointment process as it relates to return processing.  We have three subcommittees:

• People - not all assistors screen the same way
• Procedures – if you go into a TAC to have your taxes done, they cannot go into system to look up your SSN if you don’t remember it.  However, if you go into pay your highway taxes, they can look up this same information.
• Equipment – TaxWise popped up here.  There are problems with this software program, i.e., in Los Angeles, sometimes people have a lot of Forms W-2, Wage and Tax Statement, (actors) but the information does not copy forward from one form to the next in the TaxWise program.  The individual information needs to be input on each form.  

The VITA Committee has been around for three years, but this year brought change.  We had our face-to-face meeting in Atlanta, GA, in May.  VITA has three subcommittees:

1. Training VITA volunteers and materials
2. Collaboration Strategies – partnering with CPAs to help teach VITA courses, pro-bono work, enrolled agents, etc.  (questionnaires will be coming out soon)
3. Broader offering of services

VITA asked for information from current and prior TAP members about tax preparation software used in VITA sites and got about 30 responses.  Those responses helped to draw up a new statement of work for the new year.  We had a direct impact here.  TaxWise will be used for the 2008 tax year.  We made recommendations for electronic filing last year; marketing and branding were kind of glossed over though.  We decided to bring back our 2007 recommendations to see if they needed to be elevated again.  The new Program Owner admitted that the IRS answers were not complete and will readdress them. 

The Committee met with Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) at their request in Atlanta to discuss RALs and the shopping survey of site performance. VITA has gotten their accuracy rate up to 69 percent - from 0.  Private practice was at 37%.  People who got a RAL paid between 10-39 percent of their refund to get their return prepared.  Most of them got the RAL because they could not afford to pay to have taxes prepared in the first place. 

Rousseau asked that if anyone runs into a VITA issue, please bounce them off the VITA Committee before working them.  Send him an email and he will respond as to whether it is something the VITA Committee can work. 

During their first year, the Committee pushed for Process Based Training (PBT) for VITA volunteers.  PBT will be the new training system used from now on. 

Wright said the Committee has an excellent working relationship with their program owner. 

Bob Erickson, Tax Law Specialist, is extremely knowledgeable with forms and publications.  We have been getting a lot of work from him - almost too much.  The Committee actually has two functions; Forms and Pubs, and the Multi-Lingual Initiative (MLI).  MLI has had trouble identifying TAP members who speak Spanish.  We need to develop a database with members listed who can speak/read/write Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, and Korean. 

As far as what issues go to the Forms & Pubs Committee: the rule of thumb is if your issue has the words forms or pubs in it, forward it to them.  If it is not an issue they can work, they will send it back. 

This committee has worked on two forms and eight publications this year.  The IRS now wants substantive input; not a critique of what they already have.  We also made recommendations on the publications that we thought ought to be reviewed.  This, in turn, created a lot more work for us because the program owner turned around and sent them back for us to work.  We started serious work on publications this year.  We reviewed Publication 560, Retirement Plans for Small Business (SEP, SIMPLE, and Qualified Plans), and made several recommendations.  The IRS gave specific responses to our comments.  That really helped give us direction, as we now know exactly what they want us to do.  We are also working on written guidelines for the committee to use down the line.  Erickson is retiring in October and we don’t know what to expect once he is gone.  This will be a huge loss. 

This issue is hot with Nina Olson, National Taxpayer Advocate.  It was number two of the most serious problems in her 2007 Annual Report to Congress. 

Working group:  Ken Wright, lead; a message will post on TAPSpace for volunteers who would have an interest in working on this issue.

Portions of this issue will go to the Forms and Pubs issue committee, the other portions will go through the normal channels to the JC for approval.

Joint Committee Quality Review Team Progress Report – Wayne Whitehead
How process currently works: 

1. An Area committee writes the issue in MS Word, using the Joint Committee Issue Referral Form and follows the guidelines in the Quality Review Checklist. The TAP Style Guide and GPO Style Manualshould be consulted, as needed. 
2. The completed issue is e-mailed by the Area chair to the QRC analyst, Janice Spinks, at Janice.R.Spinks@irs.gov.
3. The analyst, who serves as the document (issue) coordinator, e-mails the issue to the QRC members for review and simultaneously places it in the Discussion Room on TAPSpace.  The analyst then notifies the Joint Committee (JC) members that the issue is ready for review by them.  They are reminded that this is the forum for commenting on composition, asking questions about the logic, research, etc., so that when the issue does go to the JC, only the merits of the issues are discussed.  A deadline is set by the analyst for completing reviews.
4. QRC members, using MS Word "track changes" and "comment," edit the issue and e-mail their changes to the QR Committee members and analyst.
5. The analyst compiles the QRC input into one document and e-mails the changes to the Area chair who has the option of accepting, rejecting or modifying the changes, in consultation with the committee members who prepared the issue.
6. The Area chair then e-mails a clean copy of the issue to the QRC analyst.
7. The QRC analyst e-mails the issue to the Joint Committee analyst, who then e-mails it as a pre-read to the Joint Committee members prior to their teleconference, where only the merits of the issue are discussed and a determination is made whether to forward the issue to the IRS for consideration, drop it, or return it to the Area committee for additional work. 

Shaun Barry noted when the QRC makes changes and uses the tracking function, the recommendation can look overwhelming with all the markups. 

Whitehead said they do not want their review to come across as haughty.  The changes they make are actually suggestions.  If the committee does not accept the all the changes they can resubmit to the JC with reasons why you are not accepting the changes. 

The basis of quality review is to make sure there is a better chance of the IRS accepting the recommendations.  It also frees-up the Joint Committee from spending valuable time rewriting the recommendations during their calls/meetings.

Mosler suggested sending the changed version with the changes/comments showing as well as sending a clean copy.  Janice Spinks could highlight the changes in the clean copy and not show all the comments. 

Issue statement:  Electronic debits have become a generally accepted form of paying bills, including credit card, utility, and mortgage payments.  While taxpayers may use the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS) to pay their federal tax obligations electronically, the process of enrolling in this system is cumbersome and lengthy.

This would not work since the IRS has to pull the money, the bank cannot push. 
CONSENSUS – send A1 - 409, back to be rewritten and resubmitted.

Issue statement:  Problem solving days were well received by both the IRS and the taxpayers.  This program was terminated because the new concept of problem solving day everyday was adopted and there was insufficient expertise available to handle many of the taxpayer issues in certain issues.
CONSENSUS – send A1 - 4173, back to be rewritten and resubmitted.  Refer to case resolution rooms that the Taxpayer Advocate Service offers at the Nation Tax Forums. 

Issue statement:  The IRS periodically mails Form 940, Employer’s Annual Federal Unemployment Tax Act,(FUTA); Form 941, Employer’s Quarterly Federal Tax Return; and W-3, Transmittal of Wage and Tax Statement, to employers.  Many businesses prepare these returns electronically or employ outside tax preparers; consequently, a large number of IRS provided forms are discarded.
CONSENSUS – to elevate A2 - 4566.

Issue statement:  After a taxpayer has partially completed their tax return, the software issues a notice that there will be a fee.  Depending on the software vendor used, the taxpayer had either not read the specific qualifications for free e-filing and unintentionally violated a free file condition or the taxpayer has entered information that generates a form that does not qualify for free filing.  The taxpayer is not always notified up front prior to beginning the process as to what information other than income, age and state may cause a fee to be generated.
CONSENSUS – to elevate A3 - 4550, with minor grammatical changes. 

Issue statement:  Expand the IRS process to report suspected fraud or abusive returns by wider use of From 3949-A, Information Referral, by tax return preparers (paid and volunteers).  The scrupulous tax return preparer needs a convenient way of reporting information about taxpayers who refuse to have their return done correctly.  (Currently, the Form 3949-A goes to the Criminal Investigation division of return processing center.) 

This form would be handled separately and not submitted with the return.  It would reduce the burden to the preparer because right now a paper form needs to be submitted.  Wright thought there should be more emphasis on putting this on the IRS website.  This recommendation puts the focus on the software companies.  Right now, you have an option of identifying yourself when submitting the form.  It would have to be filed independently.  there are two objections: one is tying this to VITA, the other is tying it to the software companies.
CONSENSUS – Return A6 - 4358, to Committee for rewriting.

See above.

Issue statement:  The current language in Internal Revenue Manual 4.10.2.7.4(08-01-2007) is ambiguous regarding the timeframe to hold the initial interview.  There is no minimum amount of time for the taxpayer and/or representative to prepare for the initial interview. 
Wright said he has not had this problem but has had problems where they want to do the audit during filing season or the timeframe to finish the audit.
CONSENSUS – to Elevate A6 – 4066.

Issue statement:  The IRS does not have a consistent written policy for handling requests to speak with a supervisor when calls are received in IRS call sites. 
CONSENSUS – to Elevate A6 - 4227.

Issue statement:  Internal Revenue Service presently charges for a copy of a lost return.  The fee is waived for taxpayers in federally declared disaster areas who need a return “to apply for benefits or to file amended returns claiming casualty losses.”  Charges should be waived in a federally declared disaster area.
CONSENSUS – to elevate A3 - 4404, with some minor modifications.

The toll-free number, 1-800-829-3009, that appears on Notice CP-2000 (Computer Paragraph 2000) to “call for assistance” requires the caller to listen to lengthy recordings on unrelated topics prior to being put on hold to speak to an IRS person.
CONSENSUS – to elevate A3 - 4589, with some modifications.  It will be posted to TAPSpace for comments before elevating.

TAP Reports Fact Sheet (June, 2008) 

ACTION:  Each chair should review all reports run from the database and discuss with their respective analyst to ensure the database has been updated correctly.

Morizio has implemented a standardization of all the reports run from the database.  He will review all reports available to see if there currently is a report that shows just the closed issues.  There will be two reports; one for open issues and one for closed issues. 

There is a cumulative list of TAP Recommendations from 2003-2007.  It is currently organized by date but Mosler asked that it be organized by category.  Eventually our databases will disappear and be replaced by SAMS II.  We need to wait to see how TAP issues will flow into SAMS.  The transition should happen sometime in 2009 so Morizio will continue to modify reports as necessary. 

Right now, we don’t have a real good handle on capturing the issues elevated by the issue committees since they are elevated directly by the committees to their program owner.  There generally are not IRS responses to these issues.  In the past, Barbara Foley tracked these issues by pulling them from the monthly committee reports.  This is one of the most important reasons to submit a monthly report. 

Mosler asked the issue committee chairs to look at the list of TAP active issues.  This is the list used to capture deliverables for the year.  It is important that the issues get captured to be included in the TAP annual report.  If a response is received from the IRS, please ensure it is entered in the database too. 

• Stay on topic
• Control the whole group
• Follow the QR process
• Issues to forms and pubs
• Agendas and handouts one week before the meeting
• See minutes a week to ten days after meetings
• Consider pulling the action items out of minutes to share
• If pre-read information is not provided, consider taking it off the agenda
• Chair meeting at annual meeting to elevate issues