Have stuck around because they know its a new day. We have some amazing current priorities and staffing, some hiring plans and what is on their desk. And what we can expect in the year in two years to come. Let me get right to introductions. To my right is mary beth murphy, commissioner of Small Business and selfemployed division of paris based in washington d. C. To my left come immediate left is don fort chief criminal Investigation Division ira sent to my far left is nina olson tax tier National Taxpayer advocate. Their bios or on line and if you want to review them they are amazing. They have done tremendous work on behalf of the taxpayers of this country and its going to be really great evening. Let me start by having each of them talk a little bit about the state of the irs and their divisions and then we are going to go into some q a and certainly opened up to the audience for any questions that you might have. Marybeth, can you kick us off . I want to thank the ada for inviting us today. Im the commissioners Small Business selfemployed. Im in my 60 or so one of or so one of the ground that are team i think nina and i nina fischer as the youngest longest tenure but i have found one of the longest commissioners. What are we doing at ses see it . Sase has an interesting role. We are charged with in our mission to help Small Businesses and selfemployed taxpayers as well as all 1040 taxpayers understand and meet their tax obligation. While applying the law in doing it with fairness, integrity to all taxpayers and when you think about that think about the number of taxpayers that we serve. Our Customer Base is huge and it is such a diverse work group. As a go around the country and see the work that we do sometimes i think i cant believe we do all that we do whether specialty tax, employment tax, excise tax, are exempt spaces unbelievably complex and then on the collection side we have seen a lot of changes in collection. We are responsible for 57 million returns filed annually, 6. 8 million corporate turns, 27 million employment tax returns, 875,000 excise tax, 249,000 estate and gift tax returns and then trust as well about 35,000. We have got a big job in Small Business. Carolyn mentioned the modernization plan and the new commissioner and i think they really go handinhand for us. We really need to increase the use of technology to really change the way we do business especially in Small Business selfemployed were. We have to bail them power our employees as well as taxpayers. If you have the opportunity the modernization plan lays out some great foundations and then one of the things that we are going to be working towards her in a couple of years and im going to talk about a few of those but you are going to hear some common themes in one of them is an appropriate talents of enforcement and Customer Service and we cant do that without engaging our employees. They meet facetoface. They are the face of air is whether its facetoface contact or over the telephone. We have been working hard. A couple of years ago whenever big pushes for a future state that has evolved into her modernization plan as well as our strategic goals and really getting our employees focused on that and listening to them as we go forward. This last year has been really big for sesc her biggest priority was tax reform. We were responsible for 29 provisions of Small Business. We didnt get any extra to do it and i think we have a great team we are on track and on target but i would say we are in the process of getting ready to train and our commissioner said we are going to put our training out. Its not out there yet on line but we are working with second occasion folks as we finalize all of our training so you will know what we are training folks on as it relates to tax reform. And the 29 provisions we are responsible for. Other priorities for us its been hugely successful for us. Its a great program. Taxpayers come to us. It amazes me the number of full pay taxpayers we see on a weekly basis and these are taxpayers that have large balance as well of small so that program is working well for department of state and really havent had any problems. I was like to add has anyone here had any taxpayers with the tax case . A couple. So we are continuing to work that program. Hopefully it went well and you are able to get it resolved and processed. Our nonfiler strategy with a reduction in staffing we have taken a hard look at nonfilers and thats an area where we are looking for stakeholders to help us to figure out what is the best way to get these people to file again. We are looking at testing. Many of you know some of the programs we have some of the return programs. Thats a very laborintensive program for us as well as for taxpayers as well as practitioners. We are looking at the refund whole program and how we can better make decisions using data and really looking at data instead of doing things the same way. Youll see some initiatives out there. We are looking right now at educational letters for taxpayers so we have got nonfilers stop filers and how to do we get those taxpayers back in compliance . Another priority for us is disaster relief. We have been lucky we havent had many fires were storms. Sbsd is responsible for those programs as well across the iras as well as penalties and interest. Another area where focusing on as well is taxpayer digital communication. We have been doing unauthenticated or not authenticated chat with taxpayers to answer basic questions. Hopefully in the future we will be able to use automated responses to give taxpayers basic answers to questions that they have so we are doing text chats at acs and the small number of single issue audits in our correspondence examination area and we hope to grow that to do more. They have to authenticate themselves and there are some challenges in security is paramount that we are hoping to continue to increase the number of Digital Communications that we can do is taxpayers. Thats the state of sbsd. One big highlight for us is we are hiring revenue officers and revenue agents. We are currently at 18,200 and Small Business. Our goal is to get up to 20,000, 22,000 by the end of september. We have had challenges. His mentioned we have seen a number of folks. We make offers and they declined and they get better jobs in the job market as well as different areas around the country. Its really expensive to live in new york city, to living californians live in the boston area. We have had some challenges that we are on track to hire 750 radio officers and 1200 revenue agents, new hires so we are excited about that. We Party Started with the revenue officers in the first week of training and we will be on boarding revenue agents by the end of the summer. The government lacks in funding. They canceled his meeting once. We are just catching up but we are really excited to get those new folks on board. You mentioned may maybe higherpaying but not better jobs. Yes, higher pay. Okay thank you for that update. Let me turn to nina. Can you tell us about whats happening in the Taxpayer Advocate office . Well, this is on the clock. I will be retiring on july 31 after 18 years as the National Taxpayer advocate so this will be one of my last public appearances. Ive been obviously spending a lot of my time trying to think about how to prepare my office to hand it off and ensure that the work we are doing for taxpayer rights continues. That is my focus and ive a very short list of some issues that i feel like i need to tidy up before leaving. One of the things that has happened to us over the years, when i came in 18 years ago we had 2200 employees and 74 offices and we are down to now about 1650 employees spread out over 79 offices. We have actually been shrinking our offices over the last five years. The number of employers and offices so he can open up more offices because we believe that the irs becomes more and more centralized and disappears from having a geographic footprint around the nation that we need to be there. Congress has actually said my mission is described in the Internal Revenue code at 7803c of the code. We have to have at least one office in each state so we have been opening more offices that are smaller and the most recent one has been el paso, texas which i will visit before i leave. Im really trying to get out there in the community with your employees which is very difficult because we do not, unlike espy or cia or anybody else who gets to decide how many cases they are going to start in a given year we dont. The taxpayer is experiencing significant hardship they call us in the case comes in. Sometimes my office has tried to reject the case but usually people try to email me because my email is all over the place and they let me know my office has rejected them and then they get into the system. Congress has told us taxpayers are experiencing significant hardship as a result of what they iras dozer isnt doing or is about to do. I dont know how to say you are experiencing significant hardship they dont get through the door. I dont have to do that so it difficult for employees juggling some of these cases. Some of this is brought on by some problems and systemic problems with iras in simple cases but you know they take the peoples time. We are hoping, thats where were concentrating on some fixes in their fraud detection system. As you file returns and youre asking for a refund you go to their fraud detection system and it has a very high false positive rate. 81 of the nonIdentity Theft returns last year that were identified for questionable items not related to Identity Theft but like inflated wages or Something Like that are just a mismatch of information, 81 of the returns the irs got were actually determine legitimate. Thats an abominably high false positive rate. We have been really focusing systemically to get that fixed because that has been the largest portion of our cases. They have increase by 287 last year from the year before and we can get them cleared out of our system we be able to do a lot of good things. Mary beth mentioned the modernization plan of this is something in my annual report to congress. I made the number one legislative recommendations of the iras native multiyear funding in order to replace this archaic 1960s based database or the irs has the two oldest databases in the federal government according to the Government Accountability office and they happen to be the individual master file and the business masterfile which are the two official records of the taxpayers account. Lets just stop and be afraid of that. So we really need to modernize the databases not just list them but actually replace them and all of the plans on the modernization plan hinged on us getting in to 21st century technology. If we get we wont be able to deliver meaningful accounts for taxpayers. All of those times when you call up the iras people on the phone and the person says, i know you contacted us or send something in but i cant see that information. Its because their systems dont talk to one of us all of that needs to be change in Congress Needs a fund that with the multiyear stream so we you dont just start and stop and start and stop and never get ahead. On the topic of digital and this is something ive been focusing on a lot with all of the commissioners that ive worked under all five or six or seven depending on if you count the active ones 41 million taxpayers in the united states, taxpayers people of file the return of the last three years based on ours to statistically representative survey of u. S. Taxpayers that we did two years ago, 41 million did not have Broadband Access in their home. 41 million of the 650 million taxpayers that we have filing returns each year. Any strategy in a modernization strategy that does not understand that you have to provide in Person Service for taxpayers persontoPerson Service and on phones as well as moving to digital is going to not serve the taxpayer is going to create harm to them that mary beth spoke about and theyll have to do it the downstream consequence. One of the things that ive been thinking about in terms of a Digital Future and i will just throw this out and turn it back over to carolyn is a 10 noodling about it and will probably write it to my reporting congress in june comes something up and calling taxpayer anxiety index. That is a way of thinking about how you want to communicate with taxpayers from the taxpayers perspective. Lets say taxpayers are perfectly comfortable in a file their return. They are willing to go in and check on line and you can do an analogous situation. You all are practitioners. Send something and you to have access to taxpayers on my account with your client you could maybe check and see that document has been received and you are fine about that. Go in and thats great. That saves you a phonecall but lets say you are waiting for response. Your attacks here waiting to get your refund. They go on line to check in the message has changed or the message is the same or the message goes, we are looking at here return, check back in two weeks. Suddenly that clutching feeling in the throat of the taxpayer, your anxiety is just increased and you may even be willing to check back in a few weeks but if you dont get an answer youre going to pick up the phone and try to force people to digital when what they need is there anxiety is increasing all along the way. Its going to actually undermined exactly the kind of thing you are trying to do in driving compliance. The practitioner now, you get in there and you can see those documents have been received in iq are waiting for a response. You get their response. You are going to want to call. Youve got a paying client and you also want to know what the irs is thinking about what that document. If you give push to on line and you can get to a live human teen to have that discussion there may not be a meeting of the minds. And so understanding where anxiety levels are and where you need to have that persontoperson interaction should be the driver of our modernization plan. I fear with the budgets the way they are in the driver of their modernization plan is how many people we can get on line because that is cheaper and eliminate some employees that would be answering phones etc. So i think i am watching that like the hot weather inside the irs are outside of the irs. I dont quite have the same sanguine view of the private set collection. International issues, offshore issues, people trying to resolve multiple International Tax issues with regimes that have very different concepts of taxpayer rights and dispute resolution. Those are all the things ive been looking out. Spent this is her last appearance in her tenure and its been an amazing tenure as attacks. The kid and we are extremely fortunate to have her here tonight. Theres a treasure trove of information out there. Lets turn now to the ci speaking of taxpayer anxiety. Don fort is a career agent of 28 years with the service and no one knows c. I like don does. We are so lucky to have him as chief and deputy chief eric who is in the audience former agent tom bishop is in the audience. I is a great waste to be not as a target that as an agent under his leadership. Thank you carolyn. I appreciate it. I am a morning person. This is my favorite time to speak and after that i just came back last night from a 10 day trip to scotland and ireland but it feels like its about 1 00 in the morning so he may need some good q a to get things going this morning. Its an honor to be here with my colleagues with nina nina and mary beth. We dont do this and often carolyn ive had the pleasure of working with for a number of years and i know many of you out there do. I am 28 years with ci. Im a cpa as well and have had the unique experience of basically having almost every position within ci. A unique experience knowing basically every corner of the organization and all the work that we do so it is a really exciting time and talking about some those priorities and initiatives. Its a great year for us this year. We celebrate our 100th anniversary as a Law Enforcement agency. Not many Law Enforcement agencies can say that but starting with six agents 100 years ago an incredibly rich history within ci so its an incredible honor to me. My 28 years there havent been many of those years that ci has not been my career. A lot of good things going on. Some of you are familiar with it not give you a quick overview of the work we do. We are the only agency that has jurisdiction over federal tax crimes so if you hear about, read about any federal criminal tax case there is a 100 chance of ci was involved in it. We have a much broader jurisdiction than that. Id also like to say we hear of any significant financial investigation Money Laundering, a cyber case theres a good chance of ci was involved in that as well. I talked about the jurisdiction that we have. I always say believe we have one of the largest and broadest jurisdiction of any federal Law Enforcement agency because of that. The ability and being the only agency that has a Tax Jurisdiction. Having jurisdiction over Money Laundering being involved in literally hundreds of offense to Money Laundering and we are heavily involved in secrecy cases. That being said my priority is to make sure we have got our core mission covered. The tax case being the only agency that can do that and being down terms of staffing. We are at 2100 special agents now and thats down from 360020 years ago so ive been here for the height and that in here now for the level we are at now as where we were 50 years ago. Think about some of you arent old enough to think about what the world was like 50 years ago but if you are about how many more people and how many bore tax returns were filed and how much more complicated the system is. So we have had a substantial decline and we will talk about the good news with the decrease is a challenge than it really is a perfect storm. For us you have over five or sixyear. You have 1000 special agents and thats optional retirement. The Law Enforcement Law Enforcement system 20 or 25 years he can retire. You are not bringing any new employees and then theres really no transfer of knowledge for the next generation so there are a lot of positives with the hiring but it rings with that a lot of challenges. That has been in a period we have lost 1000 we have only hired 250. Two or three classes of 24 agents by year over the last five or six years obviously just not enough to keep pace. We are no different than any other operating division. Youve talked about our staffing and mary beth as well. We are all competing with limited resources. There are brighter days ahead. We talked about everyone in the operating divisions is hiring. We have unique challenges. We dont have complete control over the hiring system. All of our agents go through the federal Law Enforcement in georgia. Thats run by dhs with close to 100 federal agencies that compete for space at the training come academy. There is intense competition so its ironic that we are worried about making sure that our agents grow. Ive spent a lot of my time, talked about the first part of being protecting our core tax mission. The second is really the hiring making sure we get them trained and we have appropriate folks out there to train. Our agents go to training for six months. Then theres a pretty extensive onthejob training program. We are hoping to hire between now and the end of fiscal year 2020 we hope to bring on 300 special agents which is a significant uptick in also recognizing the reality is we lose 150 agency year through optional retirement. Its not as great as it sounds but still fantastic news given the climate. I enjoyed doing the panels with other folks from other opera and divisions. One of the things i like to talk about is her role in Tax Administration and cias part of that role. The commissioner has really reinforced that message repeatedly but i think about, i have heard the former Deputy Attorney general speak a number of times and one of the things he spoke about a year or so ago that really resonated with me in terms of federal Law Enforcement cant really Law Enforcement general is this idea of deterrence. I will get the cole exactly right that the idea was this its not so much the number of cases that we prosecute but as the number of times and thats really thinking you know how critical ci is in the overall ecosystem and Tax Administration. One of the things that sets the u. S. Tax system apart from other countries is having a really strong criminal tax component and recognizing for those taxpayers that are compliant the avenues, the service seven is the nina and mary beth talked about in the portion of the population is criminally noncompliant that there are repercussions for that and that knowledge that you can go to jail for those criminal actions. And that the general public understands there are ramifications to that and they see there is fairness in the system. A couple of folks have talked about the new commissioner coming in. If youve heard him speak or knew him before, you know hes a huge fan of apportionment. He talked about apportionment and he talks about criminal enforcement repeatedly. One of the things that resonates with me and he said the criminal enforcement is a service to those who are doing it accurately and correctly. I think again that resonates with the deterrent deterrence impact we have but he does talk about the importance of the criminal tax system. Also making sure we are a part of the team and we are all part of the Tax Administration. They are hugely thankful to have a commissioner that is very supportive of ci and look forward to that as carolyn said. Its approaching a year here. A couple of priorities. Ive talked about tax and hiring being number one. Just a little bit more on the tax focus. We spend right now we run about 75 of our investigative timebomb tax work which is at or near an alltime high in terms of percentage of time we spend on tax cases. One other thing if youre not that familiar with tax work, wed dont have complete control over our cases. We have a lot, we take a lot of information in. Information comes from a lot of different sources outside the irs but it into the day of the partnership of the department of justice. Theres not one case that you could bring without doj where theres a tax case or nontax case. Tax cases all have to go through tax division but every other case we work with a department of justice attorney and that means we spent a lot of time and effort with those relationships with doj and aligning the priorities of the department of justice and all the judicial districts with the work that we do. The other thing, that i talk about is the goal. We have many priorities and if you just take the Tax Jurisdiction that we have youve got employment tax in yap International Tax issues. You have returned prepares an and Identity Theft. The list goes on and on and on. There are many priorities. We could spend all of our time on any one of those areas. We could deploy every single agent in our deployment tax a just agents but art job is responsible for every program all the tax Program Areas the threats in terms of Money Laundering, counterterrorism work and things like that. Its all about selecting the right cases. Broad Program Coverage and selecting the right cases. Our cases pay on average take 18 months to investigate and thats not counting the time that the justice of Department Requires additional work. Its really selecting the right cases that are significant and have the most impact. Its critical on the front end for us. I talked about the hiring. I wont spend much more time on that other than if you bring 300 agents on a critical component to our hiring process is up and onthejob training phase. These cases take a long time to work but typically at the Training Academy we peer them up with an experienced agent for their first case. You think about the impact of taking 300 agents not completely offline. But part of their time to make sure we are properly training the future agents of ci. I think again we are no different than the other operating divisions but we put a lot of time and effort into training. What comes with that also is we have got to have many people involved in the training to deliver the training, to serve as onthejob instructors so a lot of my time and effort goes into that, that process. A few investigative priorities. Mention employment tax. We work very closely. When she was there bolstering and looking at our employment tax program both civilly and criminally we are at 10 of our investigative time is spent on unemployment tax cases which is a significant uptick versus three or four or five years ago. We yet for 5 so more and then double and investigative time. Definitely a bright light even with the reduction of revenue officers special agents. We have seen an uptick in employment cases and we have self developed through Data Analytics tools some employment tax cases so we are having Great Success there. International tax enforcement. The last 10 years we have done incredible work with. Many taxpayers financial facilitators and tax presentations. Over that 10 year period we have had a lot of success and up through the program but we are continuing our efforts we are constantly refining and looking for new avenues. We have got and Attache Program where we are only part of the irs was station plays overseas. Youre adding to that. We are in the process of adding and attache to do by constantly looking out the footprint where the flows of money are and thats where resources are podesta huge financial propagation and to increase that is a significant signal to us. We have also got an innovative approach in the International Tax or in a. Is called the joint chiefs of global tax. If its myself and my counterparts in the uk canada and australia. Its kind of an outgrowth of oecd to try to get our agents and employees working closer together on what the threats are and share in training methodologies looking at a particular threat area. This has been, we have been up and running for about a year. I mentioned that cases take a year and a half typically. We dont have any public successes yet done an incredible amount of cooperation and training. Next week we are hosting with the world bank in washington d. C. A cyber summit which is really focused on this the method syntax makes of cyber crimes and cryptocurrencies and things like that. Well be hosting many other countries that we have invited to that training. We have traveled around the world training our counterparts on how to investigate those crimes. Cyber crimes and cryptocurrency and Data Analytics is something i talked extensively about. We put a lot of resources into investigating cyber crimes. I talk about whenever they are so lack of transparency the financial trends. Transparency is at risk. What level of fraud we are going to seeing cryptocurrency i dont know. I can tell you we have criminal cases on the field now. We get a lot of information about noncompliant taxpayers in that area so we are looking at it. We have trained our workforce and their agents do basic cyber training. I can put it this way. I think its similar to how international cases were a decade ago where some cases have an International Component but you didnt see that in every case. Now its rare to have a case that doesnt have some type of International Component and the reason why think they are so important is i think its not going away. Im not saying we are going to have the case where its going to be the sole part of it from all tax case or Financial Crime case that more and more you are going to see Cryptocurrency Transactions and cyber elements to everyone of the cases that we work. I want to be in a position where agents are suited and trained to be able investigate these types of crimes. We really are at the cuttingedge is. We have been involved with every major nontax case, all the dark web takedowns had i or a special agents involved to resolve all of these crimes whether its tax or nontax. Is the following money and again we are the only agency that does that. We put a lot of time and effort in that area. Data and technology. Every part of services working on this. I dont think theres a private or Government Entity that is not put a lot of resources into this area but we have had a lot of success. We have got an unbelievable amount of rich data within the irs. It would take the Smartest Group of agents and employees that i had years to make connections just by looking through terabytes of information that we have. Its the combination of really strong analytical tools with really smart people and thats agents and data scientists. We have had some Great Success in developing models and algorithms, partnering and seeing what other Law Enforcement agencies have partnering with our counterparts with an iris looking to help us out and maybe contribute as well as internationally. Theres a lot of incredible tools out there so really looking at diversifying a portfolio in terms of Data Analytics and i often say Data Analytics is the least Law Enforcement thing you can talk about. You wont hear anybody else in Law Enforcement talk them up to about it but its when the work that you do is Financial Crimes and tracing money and Financial Transactions its incredibly conducive to the work that we do we have had incredible success. We are investing heavily trying to higher data scientists and i say trying to because everybody is trying to higher data scientists. The hottest field out there and trying to find these folks and type them to work for the government is sometimes a challenge. Again its a huge potential in the leveraging technology and im excited about that. It is exciting times a lot of great stuff going up there but that i will turn about you carolyn. Thank you. Im going to ask the first question to don because its the question i get when we go i get when we go to conferences together. Can you tell us what is the data scientists what are they doing criminal investigations . We do have you know the agents are trained, the first part of training is basically and constitutional bond how to use firearms in defensive tactics and things like that and then how to investigate a case. The data scientists know how to operate and we use palantir. There a lot of sophisticated tools out there open source and otherwise. The agents all have access and are expected to use palantir but some of these more sophisticated tools really require a data scientists. Its not just data scientists come its folks in those analytical fields. Sometimes it statistics economics mathematics modeling and things like that so i do want to pigeonhole it just to data scientists. The ideas the future of ci and i think the future of the irs is more than just special agents. Its folks that can help us Leverage Technology and work handinhand with the agents to Leverage Technology to the best of their abilities. One of my concerns about the focus on data, i really applaud criminal desiccation for its work and that in one of my concerts has been that the irs is really focused on data to identify the noncompliant taxpayers and they havent used all of those tools, those wonderful tools to help the taxpayers were trying to comply. One of the areas that ive been focusing on in my short list before you leave us to get the irs to agree to create an Economic Hardship filter. We have a ton of data about peoples financial situations. We know based on their last filing or other databases that we have access to even what their Family Structures are etc. What assets they own. We have awesome collection powers where we dont have to go to a judge and asked them to let us levy against the bank account or to garnish their wages. We are required by law, by law required. If the taxpayer has an Economic Hardship many they cannot pay their basic Living Expenses we must release that levy and we have identified all sorts of processes including allowable living spent this expenses were a taxpayer cannot afford to pay their basic Living Expenses. I just prescribed a formula. We have the date on the income. We may not incomes but we have got a lot of data about income. We know the threshold for Economic Hardships. Thats the formula. Thats an algorithm. My office has created an algorithm that we have applied towards the tax base against the taxpayers have entered into and streamlined installment agreements by the automated collection system. They found that 40 of the taxpayers, 40 of the taxpayers who entered into streamlined installment agreements which is about 70 of our installment agreement, 40 of them had incomes below their allowable Living Expenses meaning they could not afford to pay the taxes, the debt that they were paying. In fact its prudent we saw 39 of those 40 actually defaulted on their installment agreements. We set them up to fail. Why we are spending our very opera resources dealing with those folks and we could be looking at folks who do have the ability to pay where basically getting the lowhanging fruit into making payments that by law they should not be paying and we are not using their data in order to identify those taxpayers, put an indicator on their account so when they call us we can say to them while lets spend some time talking about your finances so we can find out whether they cannot afford to pay really. Thats all im asking. That streams them out of the Debt Collection program which also has 40 of that since dominic agreements the taxpayers are at or below their allowable Living Expenses. We have shown that it can be done. Their public blogs this week that said okay to irs commissioner came back and said as their federal Poverty Level that could screen these people out and had public data show the 250 of the federal Poverty Level is a pretty good measure. What im looking at from the irs and the future is that they not only use that for bad act years that they also use that to insist the taxpayers who may be making mistakes but are trying to comply. If you dont do that then you lose trust for all of those taxpayers in your system. As a colleague and friend of mine in the audience here from the university of vienna and economic psychologist said if you dont have trust then youre going to have to control meaning youre going to have to go after these people. We dont have the resources to go after these people so we really have to think about the tools to build trust from our taxpayers. Some of that is using data in a proactive way to assist them. Nina thats a good point and thats a good segue to mary beth. In terms of sbsd erect an office and collections how are they using data and you want to speak to that issue . And employment tax. As you well know employment tax we didnt get to taxpayers for a year or sometimes even a half after they had a pyramid tax and now we are using data. We are doing data runs to see whether deposits were made. Did we see any indicators that they were having trouble paying paying . Worth a late and so now we are getting within eight weeks of when a taxpayer misses a deposit and sometimes earlier. We have seen great improvements there. Traditionally, we sent one kind of note to taxpayers. We have a notice, but we cant answer the phones right now. We cant control how many taxpayers have balance dues receipt record numbers of taxpayers calling after the funding. We saw backed up demand. April 15, we had about 82 increase of numbers of calls from last year. We are using data to look at what kind of notices so we developed five different notices and i thought which one will we pick . We end up with, we will use all five. Different taxpayers pay different tax pain. To see how we get taxpayers attention. We use different language so looking at taxpayer behavior. For us, thats a huge indicator of if someone will pay. We are using data in many aspects. On the exam time, we are looking at business rules and filters in applying more data to that. We are working to see how to get the best case of elections. Ive heard about hiring new revenue officers and training and a focus on behavior modifications. Does not go along with the Data Analytics and trying to do taxpayers collections . Its a balance like we talked about so we increase revenue officers, it was a gs nine. Revenue agents are on nine. Training will be challenging. When we hire 7150 revenue officers, we have to take people offline to train them. This year we will try to rehire folks. We went to see how many folks retired in the last couple of years. Try to get some of our trainers so we will use that. We want folks going out with our best peace people. Looking at data, the commissioner asked us to look at the blog so we got lots of activities around how data can help us get that. We dont want to pursue cases that result in non collectible manners. Onward to 12 is open to everyone but theres a lot of tax in the news these days but what did not get a lot of attention is the flawless filing system that we just experienced with the irs. We went through our training where the form was elected in 2014. She talked about her team having 29 provisions with no additional staffing. Their answering questions from every income level i think there is. Some of it is a misconception that the taxpayer focuses on low income taxpayers. Thats not the case. Despite all of that and the endurance of it shut down, it had Significant Impact on the employees and their personal life. They groom that came through that season through the board. Now that weve gone through that, maybe focused more on enforcement, weve heard of it in the news. Whether such thing will continue so i talked to that, can you talk more about that. Like i just said, we identify our work throughout non Selection Process across all non income levels. It applies to filters, scoring in all returns to identify potentially noncompliant taxpayers. So in addition to these, we wo work, our threshold is 10 million and below. Those will continue. Im sure youve heard the commissioner speak employment tax is something we are pursuing and there are several other programs that are across the irs. We should expect that continue. The perception that the taxpayer had and may be focused primarily on taxpayer, is that something you could speak to . Weve had a lot of individual taxpayers coming into our cases but they are taxpayers of all income levels. Certainly the filing future is also peoples refunds being held up and they are desperate for their refunds. We also get very wealthy taxpayers desperate for their refunds as well. We have in recent years, the uptick in looking at offshore and interNational Taxpayers, the Taxpayer Service is astounding. There is no tollfree line. You cannot email the irs and get a response. You have to go on a total line or mail a letter. Good luck with that. Unlike criminal investigation, they eliminated all the time it was enacted, the last for overseas offices its had that were there to help taxpayers. Theres none on the service side, even as we ramped up passport programs and offshore initiatives so a lot of those cases come to us the results. Ive been looking at establishing offices overseas. That would be something, even if we had a person and secretary to work the cases back in the u. S. , we would be able to at least educate and find out the systemic problems people are having. We really do get all sorts, i dont know how many of you tried to bring this service but maybe youve had success or maybe you havent but they recognize the cost of representation can create a significant hardship. Thats one of the statutory definitions in 78 from 11 of the revenue code to define what revenue hardship is. If youre working on a case and it could be something as simple as to cant find the person you need to in the organization, its a simple problem but your spending hours and hours tried to find a person. We can at least find the person for sent the case over and say to somebody, you need to work this or find someone to work at. Then there are many more complex issues that often raised to my level and i have attorney advisors on my staff and some of you may have worked with them and have had cases in my office where weve worked together or issued a taxpayer system for ordering the irs to do something or not do something. So it really is a grab bag of issues. Right now, one of my major issues is looking at the amish because the Internal Revenue code was changed to require a Social Security number for the Child Tax Credit. The amish do not believe in participating in the Social Security system because they depend on themselves and not the government for assistance. They dont claim the earned income tax credit and when we had dependency exemptions, there is a process used for about four decades where the amish would come in and prove they were at the amish to the Social Security Department Agency and the agency would tell the irs yes, they are approved and every year they would file the return and the irs would help them file paperwork to show their children existed, etc. Then we would file their return. The irs refused to do that this year because the Child Tax Credit requires Social Security numbers and i am writing vigorous response. I already raised this in testimony, i think its in violation with the religious freedom act and several other provisions. Well see where we go with that but its where you get a constitutional issue in tax that might be successful but well see where we go with it. Im doing my best. If you think maybe your clients wouldnt benefit from the 911, think again. We worked on an international case, multibilliondollar case, spent many hours on it together, it just came to resolution and we worked for many months on a very complex case. Its a difficult case because the relationships had really melted down in the intervention of our office, i keep saying i dont know the right answer but we need to keep working to get to the right answer. The intervention and it was really one of my direct reports was able to keep trust going on between the different parties so you could get an answer that everybody was happy about and everybody could live with. You raise a good. Not a Multi International arena, we saw a lot of Taxpayer Advocate intervention in the offshore in the program, we are seeing it more in the audit. That leads me to the new voluntary disclosure practice at the end of november in 2018. Im sure most of you in the audience are aware the Disclosure Program was first announced in 2009 in four different integrations came to an end in september 2018 and we all waited anxiously to see what was coming next and it came out november 29 with provisions and procedures for the voluntary practice, its a practice not a program because not a program in the sense that you are familiar with but it still in its early stages so i know im very interested in hearing how things are going. Lets start with where we walk into the disclosure practice at ci. Tell us a bit about what youre seeing with preclearances, any leftovers and what you anticipate. Wherever i get a voluntary question, anke voluntary answer. I cant come up with specifics in terms of voluntary disclosures continues, probably three quarters have been domestic voluntary disclosures. Turnaround time on preclearances is running 30 60 days and maybe some outliers in the area but we are not seeing a huge volume we do handle, continue to handle the intake process. The numbers significantly lower than a few years ago. Those numbers havent been publicly released. Can you talk as if youre seeing an increase in domestic related to that rather than international . The percentage of domestic is much higher than it has been in years past. That 75 domestic public years ago was about 25 so definitely an uptick in that. I will push my luck here and see if we can get more questions. The ones that have come directly to you but the one select actually, the 2009 and 11, we published those numbers so it went through the Disclosure Program. Im talking about process but i want to make this point, we had a whole conversation internally when we wanted to publish the numbers going to the voluntary exposure program. Large Business International said and i said why are you disclosing the income audit parks mark you disclosing any data . In fact, the council determined it was only officially used only. I think theres just a mistake of having me on the panel because i think we need its very early and are not think we should now but i do not believe they meet the definition of officially gone and i do have a lot of backup on that. Nina also reads her annual reports. I will find the audience, if youve read the report but if you have not, i urge you to read the most recent annual report and if you have a little spare time, which i know most of us dont but if you do, go back and read the old reports. These are fantastic publications. Theres a tremendous amount of time and effort that goes into these. Twenty issues that are addressed in detail in the guarantee if you pull up the most recent report and read those, you will find at least one, if not ten that apply to your clients right now. If you are not reading this, it really should be the first thing you read. A little commercial theft. So last session, have any of the cases been referred for example . The ones we processed all beer have. For those of you not familiar with the process, the new voluntary requires the taxpayer to come in for the event, they had to go back six years, prepare returns and complete detailed disclosure forms they submit and every voluntary disclosure is in for audit. Thats a tremendous difference from years past where domestic disclosures you would come in and file your return and often times you would never hear from the irs again. We get a notice from my have automatic delinquency penalties if there is an audit, it was rare. They turns that process upside down. He designed it to a revenue agent and its a very detailed audit. There is no guarantee of an agreement at the end but i want to shift it to mary beth and say what are you seeing in terms of exams . I wont give any numbers but its a small number. We were kind of surprised at the number. 80 of those received were submitted under the new program. Domestic is higher than, a much higher number. This is a new practice, its not really new, its a longstanding program so weve worked these programs before. He talked about the policy we are just working through the cases. Its a very small number. Now we do have a penalty framework. The taxpayer has to agree or generally need to anticipate on, they will pay one penalty which is 50 of the high balance in the highest year. It did pull from pieces here and there so its a new process but youre right, its based on voluntary disclosure practice in the irm for decades. What they offer closing agreement at the end of the exam . We will. Most of the cases will be resolved. Do the taxpayers have to request a closing agreement . Should be par for the course. So if youre in one of these exams and havent been offered a closing agreement, unless theres a reason you dont want one i just want to make an announcement, whatever he work with one of our agents, you should feel free to ask them any questions if you dont get an answer, go to their manager. We issue guidance to employees and we hope they always follow it but it is your right and i would rather you ask then i get an email. I dont mind get an email but ill go to the manager so feel free and talk to the revenue agent and manager and then the area director. In any of these cases. I talk to other practitioners and ask for manager information in the middle because they think okay, now things are taking a turn and i ask now im going to take this Good Relationship i built up over the last six months and its going all right. Best practices when you first start and exam, ask them when youre first meeting. Suggest to the revenue officers and say hi, heres my leadership change. That way it takes it out of the adversarial context and its just more information just like all the publications you get when you sit down. [inaudible question] in the past, whatever the revenue agent was doing, it would go up to technical person and that technical person may reverse with the revenue agent proposed in the problem was that the taxpayer would never be able to have access to that technical person and would not really be told why it was being reversed and that was the first of many cases that came to our office. I dont understand that because i have Technical Advisors in my organization and they should be talking to the taxpayer or representative is referred to and explain. I just got an email this morning from a representative who is giving me an example of the Technical Advisor who got it wrong and by talking to the representative recognized they got it wrong, they were not understanding the law. So i dont understand the secrecy if theres been a great deal of resistance into the Technical Advisors were not talking to the reps or explaining anything. That goes back to, if you dont have trust, you have to control. It sets up a lack of trust and it causes communication to break down so you dont get a resolution at all. You want to comment . I dont know where they are acting in this program. Ill have to get back to you and ill email you the answer to that, weve been asking our Tech Services on reaching out to the revenue agents because much like the taxpayer not knowing, the revenue agent oftentimes doesnt know either. This is a nice segue. Don, can you talk a bit about the training that they have been doing with the revenue officers in this area in the last several years . Weve got 70 or 80 of our cases, the vast majority from them, theres a process that these are often as broad Technical Advisors, intermediary between the agency and the officer to keep that separation there. We do a lot of work, we want the commissioner is a big fan of the referrals and we are trying to with reduction in resources weve seen obviously have some decline. We spent a lot of time, i expect my Senior Leaders to be held. Making contacts with the other operating divisions and part of them, we dont have complete control over the cases we work and we are trying to educate the revenue agencies and officers on what makes a good case. In terms of the badges abroad but more so, what really gets a case through trial through the legal process. Sometimes will bring in a do j tax attorney to talk about, somebody who has taken a case before a jury to explain to th them, its not just them saying you havent met the threshold but this was what really takes to make a criminal referral. We do it with resources at the headquarters to support it and deputy commercials as well. We do a lot of work with complaint counsel and getting together on the operating Division Heads to talk about the Current Trends or threats in any given area and reinforce that is vital part of our case intake process. We get a lot of cases from the department of justice and federal agencies, whistleblowers, you name it. One of the most areas where i think we can do more and suffered with resources is spending a lot of time to bolster that. With respect to the referrals, weve been talking about how the remains high priority about the irs and department of justice. Oftentimes im asked how i tell the difference between a civil case where theres noncompliance into criminal tax case and you see the similar language between recovery penalty into criminal in terms of willful noncompliant. Can you speak to what types of factors see i will look to in terms of determining whether to pursue or select the case for prosecution as opposed to throwing it back over . Thats a hard question. I talked about in my opening remarks about the fact that we cant work all of these cases, i think marybeths collection could send us 1000 fraud referrals. There are so many cases out there and is often a fine line and i talked about that broad coverage, it doesnt really help with that much to work 300 criminal employment tax cases in new york and no employment tax cases in other parts of the country. Especially of the field office, its a lot of responsible lisa and they have to make sure in each district that we brought some employment tax cases so it comes down to difficult decisions. You have to select the best cases, the most impactful cases, recognizing that we cant work them all. Theres many other cases that we have to kick back or we never get it. We do analysis about geographically where have we had criminal tax, employment tax cases and try to identify some judicial districts that we havent had in cases in a number of years and shared that with our counterparts to be on the lookout on cases in the area. It is a fine line. Were not always just looking for employment tax cases where the money has been funneled into cars and boats and things like that, weve had a lot of cases that havent involved that so i cant give you, the more specific is, we have to be selective about the cases we take and have them broadly dispersed around the country. Speaking of trying to figure things out on the taxpayer side, through the curtains, one way Tax Professionals can get some insight into whats happening in the irs is to request a copy of the file. We often do it in exams, collection case, theres been a trend in the last couple of years where the revenue officer or agent or even an officer will direct us to the irs Disclosure Office and say you should file a freedom of information request rather than hand over a copy of a file. I remember years ago when i was a junior lawyer, i walked over to the irs office across the street in baltimore and i would sit there and have a portable copy, those days are over. I wanted to start with marybeth to see if you could comment on whether there is a change in policy in terms of getting information from the irs regarding your case and whether there is a reaction from the revenue agents when the requests are made. Its not a new policy. In 2017, we issued a memorandum to revenue agents and officers, reminding them that a request is not required in these cases. Its now in our irm. You have a right to it, you need to ask the agent or agent manager but you dont need to do that. Disclosure would be very happy if you didnt do it. Im not sure why this started but we issued a memorandum. I will go back again and maybe reissue it again to remind folks but its not required. The case has been referred over and we have a special agent conducting a criminal investigation, if we request the administered a file, quote beat the response we get . I think the response would be no. But you are not really well first to answer that right now. We dont generally turn over that file, they wouldnt be entitled to them. It also depends on the stage of the investigation as well. Youre talking about the investigation phase, in that case we dont turn over the case file. Under the law, they have the discretion to not disclose to irs any information taxpayers have given us or the representative or the mere fact that the taxpayers called us so our database is completely blocked off from anybody else, no one else can see our database where we keep our Case Management system. If you want to see whats in our files, you have to make a separate request. One thing that has happened, when we have issued it, really being able to see what we have ordered the irs to do to a taxpayer system order and sink response, sometimes their emails at the lower levels, by the time it gets to my office, im sending the order to marybeth, the commissioner wage and investment, to the chief of appeals and is legal memorandum. Its worked on by my attorneys and lays out in a traditional memorandum basis all the facts that are conclusions my order, my directive. Our position has been that we will provide the taxpayer copy without going through them. We do not feel its our authority to provide the irs response. Most responses are a page and a half and they are very informative. There usually because we said so. What is, is a roadmap. We been trying to work to understand theres life after the irs, there is litigation. At least at my level, those memos are prepared, the taxpayer may want to submit it to the court. We have seen cases where the courts have cited, they think of them as memorandum. They cited the documents so thats something you would want to think about in terms of preparing yourself for your next step. When you are requesting, there are exemptions as many of you know and clearly following the exemptions on the ci files. Youre not going to get the memorandum if you do things like that. He wont get the interviews and notes of the agents but if you are at the outset of a criminal referral and youre trying to figure out how you ended up there, you could file that request for your administrative pile up to the point of the file. Weve seen some delays in the area. My experience is that they will direct us to the Disclosure Office and say you want the fi file . If there is a delay there and youre not getting the information you need as you may know, you have the right to follow suit but that could be an Economic Hardship, the cost of representation and finally it and weve also had discussions about those steps so id like to file but now i have to file suit, i cant pay for that so what are my other options . Thats where you go back to the Taxpayer Advocate. This is where the advocate comes in for your retained cases. Certainly at every income level but this is an area you might have a taxpayer with a lot of liens but still not the means to exhaust litigation. Let me go back, nina just came off a very successful taxpayer rights conference in minneapolis on the international, from all over the world travel to minnesota for an amazing conference talking about taxpayer rights here and how her work in the u. S. And there are Ripple Effect across the world and we are seeing taxpayer coming into play in jurisdictions that you may not think of, speakers from china and sweden and netherlands and south africa, its really an exciting time for taxpayer rights. If you havent read bob one recently, i recommend it to you. It has every taxpayer right listed. My question is, where are you seeing the taxpayer rights deployed by taxpayers and representatives . In the u. S. At our conference on taxpayer rights is the force ive organized. There is a very Interesting Exchange between two judges for the tax court. One was supposed to be a moderator but she stepped out to have a vigorous disagreement with the other on the panel. About how he would apply the taxpayer right in court cases and although they agreed with the case that just came out, that in a deficiency case since the Tax Court Jurisdiction and they are looking at Everything Fresh so with the irs did below is irrelevant in a way, if you want to say they didnt give me quality service, that may be true but its not a right that will go to the tax courts analysis of the deficiency because theyre looking at the deficiency fresh. I did get a sense that one of the doctors that felt that in other cases for example, collection due process or some of the other jurisdictions that the tax court has but its not in review that the promises made and commitments made in the taxpayer bill of rights, particularly now that it is codified has some significance. We just havent seen a case where it has been. What i thought and when i encourage everyone is sometimes it can be language that i used on my scale. You come in with a collection due process case at discretion. If the irs has failed to consider these circumstances on the taxpayers case which be optional description of the irs adopted maybe thats a tipper so its an abuse of discretion. The benefit of making that argument, actually citing 703 a and publication one which is the irs official description official description of that is that you might get a judge that might say, this has all legal analysis and by the way, this violates the right to a fair and just tax system. Its an example of what the violation of rights and fair and just system. I keep reminding people we are a common law country. That is the future to me of litigation, it will be slow, the Tax Court Judges will have disagreements and also district courts, its worth our while, its our pocket and arena as advocates to give meaning to this. I also say around the world, its very interesting we heard a lot from different speakers and in European Countries in particular, their protections are constitutional or in human rights conventions. They dont have a lot of statutory protection. We are almost on reverse, springer and others that said taxes are the lifeblood of government, their collection of which is a lead for government and all of this language, therefore we dont have a lot of constitutional protection from collection side so congress is responding with a lot of statutory protection. Its just the reverse of some of the other countries around the world. One of the constitutional rights, i cant remember which one, they put up the provision in the lock i said taxes shall be progressive and taxation shall be proportional. Our constitution says nothing of that, its so fascinating to see that as a foundational principle for constituting government. Its right interesting to learn this and think about your own country and tax system. Its eyeopening. Another issue that came up during the taxpayer conference was whistleblowers and how they were treated in different jurisdictions. One anecdote was in sweden, im trying to remember the phrase they used. It was basically report your neighbor, they didnt like it. In sweden, theres no reward, you dont get benefit from reporting other than making sure your pay your tax, your neighbors pain, to and its a process. Everyone is very into this in sweden and everyone seems to be about it. That leads me back to mary beth, weve seen an uptick in whistleblower claims in the u. S. , particularly in expansion, enactment and expansion and 76 23 code and expansion of proceeds from which it could be paid. Are your revenue agents seeing more exam activity as a result of whistleblower claims . We are seeing a lot of activity for a lot of years so i havent seen an increase but given that area we do work in but i have not seen an increase. I would get complaints if there was a line. But we have a study workflow of claims. We process claims for the whistleblower office, we do that in utah and have for the last couple of years but no increase that i am aware of. Many people said the u. S. Was the leader, the most protections for whistleblowers. They dont have protections for whistleblowers and thinking about the protections for the subject of the whistleblowers where theres more work in that. Thats what you really walk away from in that discussion. Its really interesting. With respect to ci, are you see more referrals coming in . I state the bible is somewhat study but something im particularly interested in because i think we should be getting more. We are looking into the way we dont see the intake so looking at the way for which ones maybe should come to ci first and i think the interesting take away for me from that is that its not always dollars based. Just because its a 5 milliondollar whistleblower claim, doesnt mean it should come to ci. Some of the most valuable ones are smaller ones. Id like to see any whistleblower claiming crypto currency, noncompliance with or its Capital Gains or otherwise. Id like to look at any whistleblower inside, Something Like that. Thats something we are looking at and working with, the Whistleblowers Office to see if we can make some improvements. With potentially something could come to ci quicker. Looking straight ahead and i seek my good friend in the audience, diana was an attorney general in charge of the review during my tenure. She will remember that about a year into our department, we invited people who were filing the whistleblower claim to send copies of the egregious claims to the department of justice so we could look at them and speak directly with ci about those cases that were of interest to us because we knew they werent going directly to ci when they were being filed. Are you seeing claims come to you from other departments like the department of justice where they will have a whistleblower claim and bring it over to ci because of the tax component . Im not aware of any specifics but is not really yes or no. Im sure we are, we are definitely getting some that are in the direction in place, we are still getting some of those but we get information from everywhere. Every Government Agency and u. S. Attorneys office internationally, people walk into the office constantly, people are coming into the international offices, making allegations of u. S. Citizens going abroad. We dont always categorize them as whistleblowers but a large percentage of our cases come from other federal agencies. You mentioned yours and i shared our frustrations or civil personnel, i hope that changes Going Forward but for now, we still have our ci in various jurisdictions around the world. Can you talk a bit more about your International Collaboration . We are seeing an uptick in crossborder investigations, criminal investigations and civil investigations and i suspect ci has a role. We have about 25 right now and 11 different posts and hopefully expanding beyond the their, we are always looking at other opportunities. They spent about half their time working with agents domestically that have international cases and they call and they say, is a case in such and such country, how can i get information if i want to interview them . That we provide the preliminary guidance but the other half is a lot of work with Law Enforcement counterparts. Some of them cover 40 or 50 countries. Twentyfive is a minuscule amount. The fbi has them in virtually every embassy. Its a part of the way we leverage and amplify these, they spent time making contacts and other embassies. We can go to our other Law Enforcement counterparts. We got a lot of different efforts underway. I talked about the j5, which is more than some of the old model is, they reach out and the case make it worked and they have some contact internationally. The new way we look at things this not just individuals at my level, executives get together go thats very valuable but having agents and employees working together, sharing ideas, threats and training, technology and things like that. We found it in the first year of this incredibly successful. The statistics while not so great in some areas, this is an area that we have seen some in terms of wrong numbers and significant upticks and exciting work in the international space. In 2017, there was a new unit called the International Tax Enforcement Group with senior ci agents helping training and supervising, can you talk about that status . There was a group set up to house some of our most experienced expertise so these are the agents that have worked these cases i talked about so instead of being separated around the country to share ideas and train other agents in our field offices and work cases, this is an area where its always interesting when they have these internet initiatives and im asked about them for years and because it takes so long, a lot of times theres not any success to specifically point to but there are cases underway, ive talked about u. S. Citizens living abroad. We are getting a tremendous amount of information and whistleblowers and other information about that particular issue. Its one of the areas this group is looking at and this is all the work we do in close collaboration with the former office. One of the things ive been thinking about a lot in the information agreement, this was proctored by the irs Senior Leadership where we talked about Security Risks of data and the commissioner said there wasnt agreement we entered into where we had real concerns about the security of the data on the receiving end but then he said not this commissioner but he said we did Risk Assessment and we agreed to assume that risk and i thought to myself, but thats not your data to assume that risk. Its the taxpayers information. Youre sending out to a country that doesnt need to meet our standards. That led me to my registration recommendation, if your changing agreement, we will give our information to another country and it didnt meet our Security Risk and you had to put it out for comment. He had to tell people publicly that we were going to enter into the agreement and there were risks and therefore, people could comment on it. My other proposal was that after you do that, if you decide to change information where there is a risk that the information will be misused and not protected in the hands of the upper government, you notify people when you are actually, for specific persons with the information. Listening to his conversation, one of the things i have been concerned about in the multi jurisdictional side and this comes out of the conference, many countries around the world do not have the protections for taxpayer rights protections that we have. So it seems to me if youre going to, you wouldnt pardon the information exchange, were not going to give your heart data and thus we see you have a right to administrative appeal that there is some kind of judicial venue taxpayers can have they have the right to represent. You might even bring concerned that something is a civil matter on our side is necessity, criminal action in the other country. Until we really start dealing with those very difficult taxpayer rights and protection issues, i think it will be fatal flaw in trying to really do International Multi jurisdictional audits. That raises all sorts of issues. Maybe we shouldnt enter into these indirect using the information as leverage to get better protections and rates in the countries that want access to our data. We dont have to give it away for free. Its an interesting point because if you look at the studies or reports that have come out, you will see that the requests coming into the u. S. Fars outweighs the outgoing requests we make for data from its foreign counterparts. Oftentimes the issues come up about what are they going to do with this data . We seen an uptick recently in requests coming from jurisdictions for information to the irs. The irs will then issue some of the information and then theres a very short period of time or taxpayer can run into court and try that. One of the reasons under this case, there are programs to challenge, the very first one is, is it for a legitimate purpose . Thats really the issue we see, don highlighted the uptick in International Exchange. Weve seen a tremendous increase in International Exchange of information in the last ten years. Its night and day what it should be. In terms of the exams, where a lot of the voluntary type unreported accounts, i would say youve seen an uptick in terms of International Scope of those exams. We have. Are your agents going through to obtain records and anchored notes overseas . We are. This is the new normal thing and if youre representing taxpayers in their audits, or criminal investigation, you need to understand this landscape. This is another area where you can go to the taxpayer avenue for knowledge and experience in this area. We are at 7 49 p. M. And its been a long day for you after the Holiday Weekend so before i ask our panelists to predict what their role will be like a year from now what their division will look like a year from now, are there any questions from the audience . You have to come to the microphone. Thank you to our panel for this presentation. I have two questions. One, in a nutshell, how do you anticipate the tax cuts and job act will impact ongoing and future ci efforts activity . Second, is there any policy or internal to ci that would precludes the eye from opening the criminal investigation of the present independent of what d. O. J. May do . No answer to the second one. I was going to chime in when we were talking about this before, we play a role, we were part of that just to be in tune with the new laws as kind of outsiders not having a role in that, all parts, it was incredible. All i can say, we would monitor all the new laws that go into place, just speaking 28 years of experience, attacks often goes into place, theres people out there looking for poles and having the news to take advantage of it. Its too early to tell and we are constant communication with mary beth and her folks and counsel folks to see what other trends out there and when archie people trying to use other . How are those provisions that your team is working on coming along . For us, weve got some time. It takes us a while to do audits, we are looking at our plant in the future. As far as implementation, we are doing very well. We had a dedicated executive, the Affordable Care act and he led the effort for us. Hes the director of exams and headquarters exams. I think we are in really good shape. We did take on a provision working with them, very small numbers so far. We are doing that on our memphis campus. 199, a huge provision for us, time will tell. So we are lucky we got some time there. We feel like we are in a good position. Training will be key. We will do training late this summer. Then we go outside and talk to congress and anybody who will listen to us. I do think there are some very neat things that folks are planning that are issuing a 48inch subway poster of the tax system. In the december report we pull that together to look like a subway map to show the complexity of the taxes getting taxpayer answers and tax law questions answered to collection and everything like that. We are in the process of designing a digital roadmap that taxpayers would be able to take the cryptic letters they get from the irs to get a simple pop up box to answer sick one six questions what is this mean cracks how did i get here . What is the next step . What are my rights . There are links to go deep as you want we will also have a little map to say this is an important date do not miss this date and that sort of thing. We are starting with the notices of deficiency there are about 48 and the irs removing all due process notices but on this roadmap to identify every single notice we could possibly find in the irs it is the work of a lifetime but really a very valuable tool for the taxpayer who was getting something if you get a notice what is this . Put in the notice number to find out what it is supposed to be and why you are getting it. That would save dozens of calls were then it turns out to be the annual reminder notice. Will keep you advised on how that goes. [laughter] positive momentum just continue i talk about hiring but in your offices or these workgroups we havent had a new employee in five or six or seven years. There are two groups and the energy that new employees bring is phenomenal and we already start to see that so one year from now we will have hundreds of new employees in the folks here hiring now are fantastic by the way that we could select and hire fantastic candidates and i started two years ago taking over as chief at the International Tax Enforcement Group j five i hope to have results we can talk about one year from now it with those permanent structures. But really to keep up that positive momentum. That will be significant for us we probably will have 300 attrition this year so how we transfer that knowledge we have a lot going on talking about taxpayer communication we just started to look at technologies to help with the repetitive processes to free up those that need facetoface and personal interaction so we are really excited about that we are hoping to implement that next year. I for one excited to hire the Justice Division is now hiring the opponents are hiring at all levels. It is a very exciting time we will continue to be busy and the work will only increase as the new employees get up to speed and start taking on cases and pursuing their own dockets. It is a good time to be a Tax Professional for i hope you are all rested up over the last three days it will be busy. If no more questions thank you for inviting us and the Bar Association for hosting and staying until 8 00 oclock. Thank you so much. [applause] and thank you to my panel. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] as part of a lecture series hosted by the Clinton Foundation at the school of Public Service live coverage starts at 7 30 p. M. On cspan. The Prime Minister no longer has a working majority in the british house of commons the Prime Minister will take questions from members of Parliament Wednesday about the chances of a deal of brexit ahead of the deadline. Live coverage at 7 00 a. M. Eastern or online and with the radio app this is the story of how this whole new economy was built and ultimately i was interested since i was working in washington how government interacts with one another but they have a collaborative relationship one of Publicprivate Partnership and so this was a great way to get into that
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