September 2000

IRS Relations Committee Meets at Brookhaven Service Center

The NYSSCPA Relations with the IRS Committee held its annual outing to the IRS Brookhaven Service Center on August 17. Unlike prior years, the meeting followed an open format that included an extensive question-and-answer period that facilitated a free flow of information. The meeting followed a similar gathering on August 3 that included members of the Nassau Chapter’s tax committee.

Former service center Director Carol Landy, who is currently the customer service field director, welcomed the committee and noted that as of October 1, the center will complete its realignment. At that time there will be three field directors at the center: Landy (who will then serve as accounts management field director), James Gaither (submissions processing), and nominee Lynne Walsh (compliance services).

Landy, citing a recent AICPA survey, noted that the IRS now has a 48% favorable rating from practitioners. However, 9 of 10 survey respondents indicated that communication with the IRS is difficult. She predicted this would improve as “the Service, from the national office down, is growing, learning, changing.” Speeding up correspondence response time is a priority. Recently response time has been as long as five to six weeks, but this is being addressed. Landy announced she will be leaving Brookhaven for four months to participate in a planning team envisioning filing in 2007.

Gaither noted that the returns processing function had been moved to a nearby building and reflected on the most recent filing season: “We consider the 2000 filing season a great success in that returns were processed four to five days quicker than the previous year.”

On behalf of the committee, Steve Buschel Gene Winston, and Mitchell Zachary thanked the IRS center staff for arranging the meeting. Winston and Zachary co-chaired a subcommittee that worked with the IRS to plan the visit. Other subcommittee members were James Framingham and Glenn Davis. Winston, who has planned similar committee meetings at the center for 14 years, paid an eloquent tribute to recently retired Taxpayer Advocate Pat Berliner, lauding her “decades of committed service fostering improved communications between the IRS and the practitioner community.”

Phyllis Angello, assistant chief of the customer services division, detailed the IRS reorganization at Brookhaven.

"Under IRS realignment, submission processing (the processing of tax returns) will be aligned by master file,” Angello said, “while accounts management and compliance services organizations (examinations, appeals, and collections) will be aligned by operating division.”

Individual tax returns (individual master file returns) will be processed by eight service centers—including the Brookhaven Service Center, which in the future will be called the Brookhaven Campus. Business master file returns (corporate, partnership, and 1040s with schedules C, E, and F) will be processed by two service centers, Cincinnati and Ogden. On the accounts management and compliance side, the Brookhaven Campus and four other centers will handle small business and self-employed returns; five other campuses will handle wage and investment accounts and compliance. The Philadelphia campus will continue to handle international returns. Amended returns will be processed at the Delaware campus.

Changes in returns processing will become effective January 1, 2001, but will not be final until the following year. During the 2001 transitional filing season, returns will be processed where they are received rather than being reshipped to the correct center (i.e., if a business tax return is mistakenly sent to Brookhaven in 2001, it will be processed at that campus, but in 2002 it will be “transshipped” to Cincinnati).

A group that included Landy and Gaither, Customer Service Division Chief Ron D'Amico, IRS Public Affairs Officer Lee Krauer, former committee Chair Robert Goldstein, and Buschel created the new format for the committee visit. Minutes of both the committee’s and the Nassau Chapter’s meetings will be posted on the committee’s area of www.nysscpa.org.