Taxpayer Advocacy Panel

Review Agenda
Program Owner, Libby Blair will not be going over each of the issues on the teleconference. The answers will be emailed to each member. In the future, the issues will be sent to members prior to the teleconference.

ACTION: Staff will email the responses to the issues.

Committee Member VITA/TCE Experience
Paul Brubaker, York, Pennsylvania, is hoping to start a new VITA site this year and has helped established sites in prior years. Brubaker has been a TCE instructor for 2 years. Duquette, Amherst, Wisconsin, has been a TCE volunteer for 10 years. Last year, he started VITA sites in his local area. Harvey Epstein, from Lee, New Hampshire, started working last year with TCE and has started new sites this year. Hal Gadon has been active in TCE for five years and thinks the practitioner pin program is a win for everyone. Steve Maisch from Arlington, VA, doesn’t have much of a background in VITA except for some exposure while in the military. Paul McElroy, Pfafftown, NC, started this year. Rick Rousseau, Killeen, TX, works at a military VITA site which has already submitted 2,200 returns, about six million in refunds this year. Ferd Schneider, Cincinnati, OH, has been in TCE for 7 years. He never went to a VITA site but is interested in the relationship between TCE and VITA. Iris Sosa, Fontana, CA, is a financial advisor and tax preparer and has no experience with VITA. Wayne Tanna, Honolulu, HI, is a professor and has been active with a VITA site at his university for 22 years. This year they had a kick-off event with governor and received a state grant to run VITA operation across the islands. Gil Yanuck is on the Communication Committee but is interested in VITA and TCE issues. He has been the assistant state director for tax aide in Nevada.

Program Owner’s Report

Existing VITA Issues

Elevated VITA Recommendations
Libby Blair, Program Owner, will send her written responses to the committee members prior to next month’s meeting. These are included in the responses already shared prior to the meeting on the 7th

Public Input
Yanuck had comments regarding the recently elevated recommendations concerning VITA and will hold the comments until he sees the responses. In his opinion, there were errors and misstatements in these elevated issues. Schneider agreed that there were some inconsistencies in the elevated issues. It was decided not to address these issues since they were elevated by other committees before the inception of the VITA committee. Blair’s responses will be sent to originating area committee as well as the VITA Committee.

ACTION: Staff will forward responses to the elevated issues to all committee members and the originating area committee.

Agenda Items:

Vice-Chair Election
Paul Brubaker is the Vice-Chair of TAP so he cannot be the vice-chair of the VITA Committee. Gadon nominated Rick Rousseau. Rousseau accepted the nomination. The nomination was seconded and consensus reached on Rousseau being Vice-Chair.
DECISION: Rick Rousseau is VITA Committee Vice-Chair

Committee Management
Ground rules for operation of committee:
Duquette has received a dozen emails on VITA issues which he passed on to Program Analyst , Barbara Toy. Toy will serve as the repository for all incoming VITA/TCE issues and comments. Toy will enter the comments into the TAP Contact database. Schneider questioned whether these issues which are grassroots issues should more rightly be handled in the area committees. McQuin pointed out that this issue committee will work differently from most other TAP issue committees since Blair would like to see any issues related to VITA. Toy will put them on the database just like grassroots issues. The issues will be assigned to VITA until Blair determines whether the committee will work the issue or not. If the committee does not work the issue, it will be reassigned back to the originating area committee.
ACTION: Committee members should send all “grassroots” issues to Toy.

Duquette suggested using email to approve minutes. Consensus reached, no objections.

DECISION: Minutes will be approved by email.
Establish Subcommittees & Subcommittee Assignments
Duquette suggested that each subcommittee have a leader or chair as well as a vice-chair. See page 13 of your TAP Handbook for duties of a subcommittee chair. Each subcommittee meeting should have an agenda and someone should be assigned to take notes.
McQuin asked that the subcommittees keep the staff informed of scheduled meetings and one of the staff will try to attend. Subcommittee meetings do not have to be posted in federal register since the recommendations are not being made directly to the IRS. Under FACA regulations, the full committee must approve the recommendations before they are sent to the IRS. A staff member should be present at each subcommittee meeting when the program owner or any other IRS representative is present. The staff member will act as the designated Federal Official (DFO) to ensure the subcommittee meeting follows FACA regulations.

Duquette shared that the Joint Committee has formed a subcommittee to do the “word-smithing” and quality review for all recommendations submitted for elevation. He suggested forming a VITA subcommittee to do the same thing. This subcommittee would review all recommendations before it is presented to the full committee.

DECISION: Hal Gadon, Paul Duquette, and Havey Epstein volunteered to do the VITA Committee quality review.

Subcommittee Assignments
Blair said the VITA objective is to, not only work emerging issues, but also address improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the Volunteer Return Preparation Program (VRPP) training. The VITA committee will have four subcommittees:

Emerging VITA/TCE Issues
- Hal Gadon, Wayne Tanna, Paul Duquette

Training Process
- Harvey Epstein, Hank Mosler, Bessie Moore

Training Methods
- Steve Maisch, Rick Rousseau, Iris Sosa

Training Materials
- Paul Brubaker, Paul McElroy, Ferd Schneider

Blair will provide the focus for each committee and will assign some of her employees to work with each.

ACTION: Staff will forward the focus for each subcommittee and will work with the members to set up the first subcommittee meetings.

Mosler asked where the integrated training PowerPoint originated. Blair could not be certain without seeing the material. Schneider thought the material was developed by AARP. The Relationship Manager on Blair’s staff works with Bonnie Speedy from Tax Aide. Tax Aide does start with the IRS training materials and does enhance the materials. Blair and her staff works closely with Elaine Beck who is from the Product Development office that develops the VITA training materials If the integrated training PowerPoint will improve volunteer training, the committee should bring it forward as best practice. Duquette worked with the Product Development folks on the VITA training materials and although he didn’t work on it, he is aware that IRS developed a training PowerPoint to go with the manual and that it closely follows the Link and Learn training.

Staff News
Patti Robb did a cost comparison for the face-to-face meeting in five different cities: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, and Las Vegas. The least expensive cities are Atlanta and Denver, both are very close in price. Chicago came in third and Boston and Las Vegas cost about $5,000 more.

One real advantage of going to Atlanta is that Stakeholder Partnerships Education and Communication (SPEC) is located there. The IRS is in downtown Atlanta and there is a hotel is about a block from the IRS office. Travel would be April 30 with the meeting on the 1st and 2nd of May.

ACTION: McQuin will send an email to the committee members to ask for their choice of location for the face-to-face location.

Duquette said he will try to keep meetings to one hour but they may go longer. He prefers to lengthen the meeting to ensure all agenda topics are fully covered.

Next meeting March 7, 2006 @ 3 pm ET

ACTION ITEMS:

Libby Blair

Blair will send out information via email to provide the focus for each subcommittee.

Staff

Email the committee members to ask for their choice of location for the face-to-face location
Email the focus of each subcommittee and set up subcommittee calls.

Committee Members:

Send all “grass root” VITA and TCE issues to Toy