Wage & Investment Reduce Taxpayer Burden (Notices)
Meeting Minutes
September 1, 2005
Participants (Panel Members):
- Michael Guthman
- Sonny Kasturi
- Allena Lu Kaplan
- Don Miller
- Neil Mitchell
- Joyce Natter
- Martin Romeril
- Ferd Scheider
- Sanford Searleman
- Virginia Symonds
- R. Jeana Warren
- Warren Wong
- James Wright
Not Present:
- Anthony DiMartino
- John Hollingsworth
- Douglas Wilhelm
Staff Members:
- Sallie Chavez (Recorder)
- Nancy Ferree (DFO)
Guests
- James (Jim) A. Cesarano, Program Analyst, Wage &
Investment, Single Point of Contact (SPOC) Representative
- Barbara Delbene – Chicago, IL – National
Community Tax Coalition
Welcome
Acting Committee Chair Sonny Kasturi welcomed everyone, as
this is his first meeting as the acting chair. Chair Kasturi
reported on the Joint Committee Meeting last month. The following
was discussed:
- TAP will participate in Town Hall Meetings with National
Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson.
- Communication Committee will work on TAPSpeak.
- Two recommendations from Area 3 were accepted to elevate
and one was rejected.
- Annual Meeting Agenda was discussed and finalized.
- Self-assessment and presentation for the Annual Meeting
is required by the Joint committee by Sept 6.
Roll Call
Analyst/Recorder Sallie Chavez took the roll call and quorum
of eight (8) was met.
Review/Approval of Prior Meeting Minutes
The meeting minutes were approved by consensus.
Sub-Committee Reports
- Document Assessment Tool (DAT)
Sub-committee Chair Miller reported he and Analyst Chavez
discussed the notices that need to be scored. They selected
five (5) of the CP500 series and assigned them to teams.
An email was sent out to all members advising them of their
teams and what notices they will be scoring. Most of the
notices have more than one version. Analyst Chavez will
mail out “hard copies” to each team by Friday,
September 2, 2005. It was request that the committees score
the notices and come to consensus on the scores by the end
of October and provide the excel spreadsheets to both Sub-committee
chair Miller and Analyst Chavez to be discussed at the Annual
Meeting in Washington in November.
The CP25 was assigned to Team 2 at the Face-to-Face
meeting in Atlanta and was never completed. Sub-committee
Chair Miller asked that Committee Members Guthman and
Wilhelm score the notice and get the results to the Analyst
as soon as possible. Committee Member Guthman asked to
have the CP25 notice emailed to both committee members.
Acting Committee Chair Kasturi asked Subcommittee Chair
Miller to send him a list of notices that were scored
this year.
Two (2) of the teams lost their leads. Committee Member
Guthman will lead Team 2 and Schneider will lead Team
4.
- Referrals
Sub-committee Chair Searleman sent out an email covering
the referrals his sub-committee had. They were discussed
and the committee agreed with the sub-committee’s
decisions to drop all the issues.
- Annual Self-Assessment
Acting Committee Chair Kasturi discussed the Annual Self-Assessment.
He has emailed the Self-Assessment to all members and would
like their feedback. The deadline was today but he would
like to have everyone’s input no later than tomorrow
(September 2, 2005). This Self-Assessment will be the basis
for his presentation at the Annual Meeting.
Comments from SPOC Representative
SPOC Representative Jim Cesarano reported the following:
- The CP79 group of notice needs to be scored based on
a TIGTA investigation. There are four (4) versions of the
notice to be scored.
- TIGTA Version
- Exam Version
- SPOC Version
- Legal Version
The committee members who score these notices will also
be part of a focus group to discuss why they scored the
way they did. Volunteers were solicited for this project.
Committee Members Kaplan, Romeril and Mitchell volunteered.
It would be better to have at least five (5) on this sub-committee.
Analyst will contact members who are not on the call and
ask if the would like to participate in this subcommittee.
- There has been no contact from the Penalty and Interest
DPT. SPOC Representative Cesarano found out that they were
dealing with another TAP Committee. He has advised them
that this committee should be working on the Penalty and
Interest as they had been involved in it previously. They
will work with the committee. They would like to have the
before and after versions of the Penalty and Interest scored
using the DAT as well as feedback.
- Upcoming Work:
- Simplification of Penalty and Interest – on
going.
- Notice Elimination – on going.
- Simplification of CP 23, 24 & 25.
- Combine notice testing with forms.
- Notice Stubs – on going.
- Electronic email of notices sent to Practitioners
– Commissioner's plan.
- Notice elimination is meeting face-to-face to come up
with a methodology. They are gathering documents on the
Correspondex letters.
Detroit Print Site Tour
Acting Committee Chair Sonny Kasturi lead a discussion about
the tour. All the members thought the tour was helpful. A
couple of members though that it may have failed the cost-benefit
test since it was not coupled with a Face-to-Face meeting.
It was discussed that new members should go on this tour as
soon as possible. It was suggested that the tour could be
part of the face-to-face meeting.
Meeting Close
Committee Chair thanked the non-returning members for their
participation on the committee. SPOC Representative Cesarano
also added the thanks from the SPOC.
Next meeting will be the Annual Meeting in Washington, DC,
November 2 - 5, 2005.
These minutes were approved by the
TAP Notices Issue Committee via email on 9/26/2005.
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