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How Does Appeals Notify You of Their Involvement in the Case

Posted on Dec. 13, 2017

Over the past year, the decision by Appeals to no longer hold face to face meetings and the subsequent partial reversal of that decision served as the highest item of interest regarding Appeals. Taxpayers with cases involving controversies large enough to warrant assignment to an Appeals Officer in the field can now obtain a face to face conference with Appeals again. Taxpayers whose cases do not have sufficient dollars at issue continue to be sent to the back of the bus because the low dollar amount of their controversy means their cases get assigned to low graded Appeals employees who reside in the six Service Centers where Appeals has employees.

One of the concerns that Appeals has in allowing the case of a taxpayer with a small amount of tax at issue to meet with a “live” Appeals employee in a face to face meeting is that the case is scored for assignment to a low graded Appeals employee and in the local offices Appeals does not have low graded employees, or enough low graded employees, so it needs to send these case to the Service Centers where the low graded Appeals employees reside. Because of the limited geographical availability of these employees and the fact that Service Centers do not really accommodate meetings with taxpayers, taxpayers with smaller dollars at issue continue to have the pleasure to deal with the IRS via phone and fax just as they did during the examination phase of their case.

On the listserv for clinicians who work on cases involving low income taxpayers, a new issue concerning Appeals emerged recently. The new issue involves the manner in which Appeals notifies the taxpayer, or the representative, of the assignment of the case in Appeals. Several individuals posting to the listserv reported receiving contact via phone instead of mail of the assignment of the Appeals employee and some reported that in that phone contact the Appeals employee also wanted to discuss the merits of the case. Because the phone contact came “out of the blue” with no opportunity for the person receiving the call to prepare for the discussion, the representatives receiving these calls invariably sought to put off the discussion of the case with varying degrees of success. In questioning the Appeals employee about the approach of calling out of the blue to discuss a case with prior correspondence, some representatives received the explanation that Appeals no longer sent letters in order to save money.

Donna Hansberry, the Director of Appeals, attended the most recent Low Income Taxpayer Clinic conference on December 7 to discuss the interplay between Appeals and those representing low income taxpayers. She did not seem to be aware of any changes within Appeals that stopped the employees from sending letters to taxpayers and representatives upon assignment of the case and that encouraged Appeals employees to “cold call” taxpayers or representatives seeking to discuss the case. She asked that attendees send her information about this practice and also solicited comments on what Appeals should adopt as the best practice for notifying taxpayers and representatives of the case assignment as well as notifying them of the time (and for taxpayers owing sufficient money, the place) for holding the Appeals conference.

One of the slides she used in her presentation showed that the number of Appeals employees in the past three years. She said that the number has dropped by 1/3 since 2010. The number of cases has dropped but not by the same percentage.

Another slide she displayed showed the breakdown of the caseload in Appeals which is now heavier on collection cases than examination cases.

Because Donna solicited feedback on this issue, PT will be glad to collect feedback and forward it to her. If you have experienced the type of cold call described above, let us know by sending in a comment. We also will forward to her suggestions on how to make the interaction with Appeals work best. Do you want a letter immediately upon assignment of the case to an Appeals employee letting you know the name, address, fax number and phone number of the employee and then another letter setting up the conference? Is there a way to reduce the number of letters and still allow you to properly prepare for the Appeals conference? Let us know your thoughts so we can pass them along or pass them along directly to Appeals.

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