TFP Issue Committee Teleconference
April 8, 2010
1:00 pm EDT

Program Owner

• Wagner, Patty

Designated Federal Official

• Morizio, Louis

Committee Members Present

• Colon-Sacarello, Raphael
• Finestone, Sandra
• Fuentes, Luis
• Jackson, Robert
• Kahn, David
• Levine, Howard
• Mackie Wayne
• Martyniuk, Lev, Chair
• Mossad, Elizabeth
• Mull, Robert
• Parrish, Charnia
• Rollins, Jackie
• Taylor, Rita
• Thomas, Donald, Vice Chair
• Waterman, Richard

Committee Members Absent

• Garant, Felicia
• Kapugi, Louis
• Wingard, Kelly

TAP Staff

• Babb, Rose
• Odom, Meredith
• Knispel, Marisa

Welcome
Martyniuk welcomed everyone to the call. Quorum was met. The minutes from November 2009 and March of this year were approved by consensus.

Subcommittee Report Out

Subcommittee Form 2848SP and Form W-7SP
Fuentes suggested that for Form 2848SP, Power of Attorney and Declaration of Representative, should request responses in Spanish and that the IRS should hire bilingual staff to assist in reviewing the Forms submitted.

Fuentes indicated that they had not completed the review of Form W-7SP, Application for IRS Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, and its instructions. With Wagner’s permission, he extended the deadline for its review until April 12th.

Morizio reminded the members, that according to the TAP Charter, every issue must be approved by the Joint Committee before it is sent to the IRS Program Owners. All recommendations that are ready to be submitted will be presented to the Joint Committee on April 27th and if approved, Knispel will forward them to Wagner. If the recommendations do not meet the deadline of Joint Committee meeting, the recommendation cannot be forwarded to the Program Owner.

Publication 519
Wagner mentioned that the comments made by the members on this Publication were very good. There were fifteen recommendations made; six were accepted to be adopted and two will be considered. She stated that Rollins’ write up on the asylees and refugees was unique but since there are no tax rules that apply to this group, they decided not to include the discussion in the Publication. The IRS is, however, considering including a section on the refugees and asylees in the website first

PDF Files in IRS website
This subcommittee is chaired by Kahn. He stated that the PDF format on the IRS website does not follow column format, thus one cannot copy and paste text into the form. The subcommittee recommends the IRS should improve the format off the electronic forms to make them more useful. Kahn said that by having the text formatted properly using Adobe PDF text frames that align text with the columns on the page as viewed, the text can then be easily copied. Kahn will revise the draft on “PDF Document on the IRS Website” and send it to Knispel to circulate to the subcommittee for review before sending the final proposal to the Joint Committee.

Program Owner Presentation

Form 1040 Focus group
Wagner mentioned that the focus group will be held on April 26th from at 2:00 – 4:00pm ET. Everyone must have access to a computer. The members of the group will be: Mossad, Thomas, Rollins, Waterman, Jackson, Mull, Finestone and Wingard.

Public participation
None

Closing Remarks Next meeting will be Thursday, May 13th, 2010th at 1:00 pm EST.