Taxpayer Advocacy Panel (TAP)
IRS Notice Improvement Issue Committee
Meeting Minutes
August 20, 2008 at 12:30PM EST

Designated Federal Official (DFO)
Nancy Ferree, TAP Program Manager, Plantation, FL

Members Present
Carolyn Adams-Dodds
Ben Chapman
Steve Fulkrod
Joe Hurr
David Jones
Lee Stieger
Chuck Tice
Norma Woodard

Members Absent
Neil Mitchell
David Meister 
Max Scott
Howard Stahl
Edward Uhrig

Staff Present
Donna Powers, Analyst
Anita Fields, Secretary
Jim Cesarano, IRS Program Owner

Guest(s) Present
None

Welcome & Roll Call/Quorum
Lee opened the meeting and welcomed everyone.  Lee mentioned that if anyone send the response to the installment letters directly to Jim, please copy Nancy Ferree and Sallie Chavez.

Ben mentioned that last month the committee decided not to send comments directly to Jim Cesarano and Sallie will have a prompt turn-around.  Ben thinks everyone should be doing the same thing and forwarding the information to Sallie and not copy Jim and allow the TAP Staff to forward to Jim to meet the due date.

Nancy agreed that it would be extremely helpful if the committee adapt that procedure because Sallie sometimes consolidates responses.

Lee said that if the responses are not sent through Sallie then he is afraid that the committee will not get credit because something will be missed.

Jim clarified that when something comes down for the Notice Review Subcommittee there is a 7 day turn around for DAT scoring.  If it is urgent then there is a 3 day turn-around with only narrative comments.

Dave Jones requested that when something comes down can you please indicate the deadline.  Jim stated that he will place the please respond by in the subject line.

Jim has clarified the difference between the Correspondex letters and CP notices.   Jim suggested that the committee might want to establish an archive of knowledge that can be passed to new members on how to score correspondence letters.

Dave Jones suggested that new members or 2nd year member be head of subcommittees when assigning new issues so there will be continuity.

Approval of Meeting Minutes
Minutes were approved by consensus.

Comments from the Program Owner
Jim just mentioned that Kevi might have some new assignments coming down the line soon.  If Notice Governance goes through, there will probably be an impact on actual notice reviews, in terms of correspondence going through DPTs, rather than going through reviews.  There may be more of an emphasis on formalizing or moving more of the programs to work with the Dynamic Process Team procedure.

Lee said that in early spring there was a memo sent on the Visually Impaired Project to David Krieg, Director, Leadership and Education (HCO) and Julie Garcia, Director, Stakeholder Partnership, Education & Communications (SPEC) following up on the response memo (February 2008) sent by the Notice Improvement Office (NIO) to TAP. NIO's response memo had informed the committee its recommendations were beyond the NIO's scope and it was forwarding TAP's memo to David Krieg and Julie Garcia. We haven’t heard anything back.  We are still waiting to hear something back.
ACTION:  Jim will follow-up with Sidney on his intent to contact David Krieg and Julie Garcia to determine if they had a response to the follow-up memo.

Publication 3498A
Steve Fulkrod doesn’t have anything new on this.  Ben reported that last month Sidney thanked the committee for their comments and he may ask the committee to DAT score the 3498 in August or September.

Jim stated that he hasn’t heard anything from the team lead.  Therefore there is not anymore work to be done on this form.  If the team has more work to be done he will contact Sallie.

This project is now closed.

The subcommittee members were not available; therefore we will have a report next month.

Installment Agreement Letters
Tice stated that he have his and Norma Woodard’s scores, but doesn’t have any of the other scores.  Dave Jones stated that he sent his scores to Sallie and apparently she couldn’t read the file, therefore he is going to resend them to Sallie.

FAT Update
Ben Chapman reported for Max.   Right now all work has been completed for the FAT and it is still in draft format until we get a consensus from the entire committee.  After that the next step is to present it to the Tax Forms and Pubs committee. 

Nancy stated that she spoke with the Program Owners from the Tax Forms and Pubs committee and they thought it was a wonderful product, but were not interested in using the FAT form for scoring their forms.

Jim mentioned that although Tax Forms and Pubs don’t want to use it, the Notice Committee can use the FAT informally to score forms that come to them from SMEs. 

It is placed in an in-active status for the Notice Committee.  They also agreed to send it to the chair of Tax Forms and Pubs, Al Rodriguez. 

Lee asked if there should be standard developed.  Ben stated no, he don’t think so.  Maybe we should take Dave Jones one page standards and adopt that instead of putting effort into creating pages on top of pages.
ACTION:  Lee is going to send an email of the FAT to Al Rodriguez and Ken Wright and inform them that the form is complete and they can use it if they want.

Meeting Close
Follow up on correspondence letters, may need to form committee to look at this. 
Lee Stieger closed the meeting by thanking everyone for attending.  Meeting was adjourned.

*Certification:  These minutes were approved by the committee by consensus on 9-17-2008.