Taxpayer Advocacy Panel (TAP)
VITA Project Committee
Meeting Minutes
March 9, 2010

Designated Federal Official (DFO)
Nancy Ferree, Acting DFO

Members Present
Justin Axelrod
Raymond Buschmann
Richard Coonradt
Ken Donnelly
Gary Iskowitz
Edward Johnson
John Kim
Matthew Kosanovich
Timothy Oetken
Swarna Vallurupalli
Stephen Vanderver
Marilyn Young

Members Absent
Eboni Moss
Jeffrey Steinberg

Staff Present
Anita Fields, Secretary
Donna Powers, TAP Analyst
Roger Burton, IRS Program Analyst
Cindy Jones, IRS Program Analyst
Kate Lett-Deathe, IRS Program Analyst
Fred McElligott, IRS Program Owner

Guest(s) Present
Sallie Chavez

Welcome/Announcements
Stephen Vanderver welcomed everyone to the meeting.

Review of Previous Meeting Minutes
The committee approved the February meeting minutes by consensus.

Program Owner
Roger Burton reported that the program owners, TAP employees and panel members had a meeting to ensure clarification on the subcommittee assignments. Burton also introduced Kate Lett-Deathe as the new program owner for the VITA Financial Education and Asset Building (FEAB) subcommittee. She is a SPEC Territory Manager from Kansas. She has been involved in FEAB since its inception.

Subcommittee Report-Out
VITA Quality Review (QR) Subcommittee—Vanderver reported the subcommittee discussed the tools for quality used by the preparers. He had to opportunity to share with the VITA committee some actual forms that were filed for an Indiana AARP site. He said that the forms are excellent and the tools are there, and if they are all used properly, there is no issue. That is what the quality team needs to ensure. Vanderver said there seems to be a problem with the site coordinators not following the training.
John Kim commented that there seems to be a problem with site coordinators being compliant. The training is good, and the panel needs to find a way to make the coordinators compliant. Gary Iskowitz shared with the committee that there are very distinct and different programs out there. It seems that the training materials are dummied down and it may be hard to get it accredited because it is not being taught at a college level. Iskowitz thinks there should be different training programs; one for university level and what we currently have. It was also mentioned on the Form 13614 there was no box for head of household. Vanderver explained that questions are on the form to help determine if the taxpayers are head of household or not.

Donna Powers informed the committee that the notes from the Quality Subcommittee call are posted to TAP Space.

Burton said that during the subcommittee call they shared year-to-date cumulative numbers from last filing season and where some of the problematic errors were. They also shared cumulative numbers from this filing season, cutting off around mid-February. Burton also sent out a link to everyone with the most prominent error reject codes for this year with the definitions.

VITA FEAB Subcommittee—Swarna Vallurupalli reported that the subcommittee did not meet in February due to the committee going through changes. Now that she has a little more direction, she has sent out information to the members of the subcommittee and plan to hold a meeting after April 15, 2010.

Justin Axelrod said that the committee is getting on track; they are waiting on Kate Lett-Deathe to send Vallurupalli some information. Once the information is out to all of the subcommittee members, which will be their basis where they start. He feels once they meet in April and discuss and plan where the subcommittee is going they will be on track and have something completed by the end of the summer.

Vanderver asked to be copied on information sent to FEAB.

Donna asked that she be copied on everything sent out.

Richard Coondradt asked Lett-Deathe to give a summary of where the FEAB subcommittee is going.

Lett-Deathe gave a little background as to where they are in SPEC, she stated that the ultimate goal is that every VITA/TCE site, of which there are over 12,000, would offer some form or fashion a financial dissertation to every taxpayer that walks through their door.
The goal now is trying to figure out what the partners are currently doing. Figure out how we can share best practices from one partner to another, and how as SPEC employees we can help our partners become involved if they have no involvement whatsoever or more through to the highest level of involvement. The primary measure is the percentage of sites that have FEAB activities, they have workload indicators that include direct deposit percentages and various other indicators to include partners involved. There is a new form we are asking all the employees to prepare based on an evaluation at a partner level at this time. SPEC is hoping that TAP can help on several different levels. How do we leverage the model, how do we get FEAB activities and services drilled down to site level. We also like feedback if SPEC has chosen the right goals and measures. After the committee has looked at the training, we would like feedback, if we were on track with the training, is the training is going the right way, are we off base, and are there other ways we can improve the education of employees as well as the working relationship with our partners on FEAB.

Meeting Close
Vanderver thanked everyone for attending the meeting. He reminded everyone on the next call date and time.