Taxpayer Advocacy Panel (TAP)
Joint Committee Teleconference Minutes
Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Designated Federal Official
Shawn Collins Acting TAP Director

Members Present
Sabby Jonathan - TAP Chair
Thomas Walker - TAP Vice Chair
Cheryl Morse - Chair, Area 1
Mary Jean Potenzone - Chair, Area 2
Ann Spiotto - Chair, Area 4
Daniel Fretheim - Chair, Area 5
Herbert Bohrer - Chair, Area 6
John Kim - Chair, Area 7
Susan DaCorte - Chair, Communications
Josefina Villarreal - Chair, EITC
Lev Martyniuk - Chair, Tax Forms and Publications/MLI
Ernest Miller - Chair, Notices Improvement
Harlan Barnett - Chair, Small Business Self Employment
Tommy Thompson - Chair, TAC
Stephen Vanderver - Chair, VITA
Susan Lynn - Vice Chair, Area 3

Staff Present
Rose A. Babb - Note Taker
Louis Morizio - TAP Manager
Roy Block - TAP Manager
Nancy Ferree - TAP Manager
Judi Nicholas - TAP Manager
Steve Berkey - Senior Program Analyst
Susan Gilbert - Senior Program Analyst
Sally Chavez - Program Analyst
Ellen Smiley - Program Analyst
Patti Robb - Program Analyst

Guests
None

Welcome/Announcements /Review Agenda
Sabby Jonathan welcomed everyone to the Joint Committee (JC) meeting. He noted the following action items from January minutes to be reviewed:

1. National Taxpayer Advocate, Nina Olson’s meeting
2. Formed Strategic Plan Task Force
3. TAP Response to IRS Announcement 2010-9

Roll Call
Quorum was met. The minutes for January 27th were approved by consensus.

Announcement 2010-9 proposal that places new reporting requirements for business taxpayers with assets exceeding $10 Million to disclose on certain tax positions on their income tax returns.
Tom Walker commented that in his assessment of the Webinar teleconference along with Jonathan’s pre-reads, he is not convinced that this is a TAP issue.

Mary Jean Potenzone commented that the IRS representative on the Webinar teleconference discussed who would be covered under Announcement 2010-9. According to Mary Jean, she did not think the representative thought this issue would need any further discussion.

Other members expressed their view that this is exactly the kind of thing TAP should take an active role in. After discussion, there was consensus to authorize the Chair to submit his response to the IRS.

National Office Report
Shawn Collins reported that her secretary Shelby McKenzie will be on a detail assignment from March 1, 2010 through April 24, 2010. In her absence, Anita Fields, secretary for TAP office in Plantation, Florida will act as her secretary.

The 2010 TAP Charter was approved. It will be officially signed and posted to TAP Space on March 16th. There were some modifications, to the charter. It was noted that some of the items in the charter did not adhere to guidance from the Government Accounting Office, (GAO). It stated that subcommittees will work together with IRS program owners on projects identified by the IRS. According to GAO guidance, the subcommittee is to report back to the parent the joint committee, and must not provide advice or work products directly to the agency. Because of this modification, the Charter is now reflected to include language that states projects will be reviewed by the Joint Committee prior to submission to the IRS.

Collins mentioned that TAP should be very careful and tread very softly on responding to IRS announcements and notices. Although some of the notices may not appear to be legislative, they may be. TAP charter does not allow any comments on legislative matters.

Collins noted that there were some recommendations from TIGTA on the charter. In complying with TIGTA’s recommendations, TAP included in the charter clarification of the liaison role of the TAP/TAS staff and to actively reflect the dual role of TAP.

Jonathan noted that TAP members will have a chance to review the report from the project committees and if necessary will spend whatever time is appropriate. He suggested that the committee should not spend time and effort double guessing the work of an entire committee that has taken over nine months to complete projects.

Jonathan mentioned to Collins that he would like to have a mid year informal telephone or face to face conference with Nina Olson, National Taxpayer Advocate via phone or in person. This will include Tom Walker and two to four other TAP members.

TAP Chair Report
Jonathan asked the Strategic Plan Task Force, chaired by Cheryl Morse, if there are any discussions on what the committee has planned to accomplish this year. Morse mentioned that she received some background from Steve Berkey on what Charles Davidson, former TAP Chair had done with the committee previously. She stated that she will send an email to the JC with a date and time to have a discussion.

Issues that originate from Area Committees
Issue 5601, Social Security Benefits Received by a Minor, was submitted to Forms and Pubs from Area 7 for comments. The recommendations were to modify Publication 915. The procedure informally has been when an Area gets an issue, they keep the issue but they let the affected project committee comment on it.

Louis Morizio mentioned that the same situation existed last year. The Area committee had developed a recommendation. He stated that TAP arranged for members of the committee to sit in on the project committee call and treated the project committee and program owners from VITA as subject matter experts. The Area committee kept this issue and never transferred to the project committee.

Member Biographies on TAPSpace
Jonathan asked the Area Committee Chairs to ensure that their committee members add their pictures to their biographies on TAP Space. He also stated that it is useful to go on to someone’s biography and become familiar with their face.

Issue Tracking Task Force
An Issue Tracking Task Force was formed at the request of the Joint Committee. This list includes Jonathan, Potenzone, and Connie Sharpe in addition Judi Nicholas, Morizio and Berkey from TAP staff. Jonathan asked if there were any other JC members interested in becoming volunteers.

Quality Review, (QR)
Tom Walker informed the JC that last month there was a discussion on changes to the QR process. The new polices were posted by Mary Ann Delzer. One Issue has come through #16776, Universal IRS Database. Currently, there are no issues in the pipeline. Each of the area chairs should ensure there is an Area quality review committee. Issue #16776 was turned around very quickly, but returned to the Area committee for some changes. Dan Fretheim mentioned that the JC Quality Review’s feed back was well written and did not take much time. The comments were constructive and concise.

Jonathan informed the JC that there is a need for more issues in the pipeline. He stressed to the Area Chairs that each area needs to have an internal QR process. Areas are to do their own QR before it goes to the JC QR Committee for a final review. Some Areas have already established a QR process.

Annual Report
Steve Berkey informed the JC that the meeting last week with Jonathan, Roy Block, Susan DaCorte and Lee Battershell was good. There is still more input needed from the former TAP Chair Charles Davidson on what will be done on some of the sections. Battershell is doing some write ups. The focus this year will be on getting some successful recommendations included. Mary Ann Delzer will provide the reports for statistical information on recommendations and outreach, to the writers of the report from the databases. SBSE and MLI Committee Chair Reports for 2009 are still outstanding.

The Communication Committees’ Ad Hoc group is scheduled to work on the annual report. The group will meet every other week up until the annual report is complete and ready for distribution. There are still some issues that were elevated to the IRS in 2009 that are awaiting responses. Some 12-15 issues were pending a committee review of the IRS responses on whether they will be accepted, partial accepted or rejected. These issues will come up in the committee meetings for February and March. Berkey asked that the Chairs do their best to make a decision on those responses from the IRS in order to have most of those issues in a close status as opposed to pending TAP review when the report is finalized.

Recruitment Update –Plans for 2010
Steve informed the JC that the analysis was completed to determine where to recruit panel volunteers from this year. Collins has approved the states that TAP will be recruiting from. Currently, we will recruit in 25 states, down from 39 states last year. This year there are 29 members scheduled for retirement in December 2010. The managers went through all their states within their areas of recruitment. There are currently 95 alternates in the TAP volunteer pool and some will be used to replace those panel members that are retiring in December. This will result in recruitment in fewer states. The recruitment period is March 15 through April 30. The online application software has been revised for this year and will be tested by the end of February. It will be easier for applicants with various skill levels to complete. TAP will be sending out some recruiting materials, talking points and other promotional items that members can use to help to promote the recruitment campaign.

Annual Meeting Update
Susan Gilbert thanked Rose Babb for a great job on putting together the comments and numbers for the Roll Up Survey for the Annual Meeting. Gilbert is adding some additional computations to the survey. Feed back will be ready for the next JC meeting.

Issue # 5-16776
Fretheim thanked the members of the subcommittee, J.T. Manuszak, Area 5 Chair, Kay Bell, Ken Donnelly and Josefina Villarreal for the great job they did. He noted that the IRS telephone customer service representatives are not utilizing the universal database. This results in taxpayers having to repeat themselves each time they call the customer service.

The solution is to better train the employees and provide periodic refresher courses on the agency’s existing universal taxpayer database. Employees should be trained on Accounts Management System (AMS), Integrated Data Retrieval System, (IDRS) and Automated Collection System (ACS). These systems are all integrated and can provide contact and payment histories for the taxpayers and their representatives. The IRS can benefit from being more efficient.
Decision: This issue will be elevated to the IRS.

Town Hall Meeting
Herb Bohrer mentioned the town hall meeting in Albuquerque, NM on February 16 and how successful it was. Nina Olson, National Taxpayer Advocate, was in attendance and the panel got several issues from it. There is another town hall scheduled for March 18, 2010 in Denver, CO.

Public Input
None.

Closing:
Collins closed the meeting.