WEBINAR: AHighlight of Tools and Resources from CFED's Taxpayer Opportunity Network – 12.2.15 – Live Captioning Transcript
> Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's webinar titled a highlight of tools and resources from CFED's Taxpayer Opportunity Network. I am the moderator for today's webinar and my name is Michael Roush and I and the director of the Real Economic Impact Network at the National Disability Institute. Before we get started I would like to turn it over to my colleague NakiaMatthews who will go over the webinar housekeeping tips for us. Nakia?
> Thank you Michael and good afternoon everyone. The audio for today's webinar is being broadcast through your computer. Make sure your speakers are turned on and your headphones our plug-in. You can control the audio broadcast using the audio broadcast panel and if you accidentally close the panel or if your sound stops, you can reopen it by going to the communicate menu at the top of your screen and choosing joint audio broadcast.
> If you do not have sound capabilities on your computer or prefer to listen by phone you can dial the number you see here and enter the meeting code. Please note you don't need to enter an attendee ID.
> Real-time captioning is provided during this webinar. The captions can be found in the media viewer panel which appears in the lower right quarter of the webinar platform. If you do not see the captions you may need to open the media viewer panel by selecting the media viewer button in the upper right-hand corner of the webinar platform. If you would like to make the media viewer panel larger you can do so by minimizing some of the other panels like chat or Q&A and conversely if you don't need captions you can minimize the media viewer panel.
> We will have time for questions at the end of the webinar. Please use the chat box or Q&A box to send questions you have during the course of the webinar to myself or Michael Roush and we will direct those questions accordingly. If you are listening by phone and not logged into the webinar portion you may ask questions by emailing them directly to Michael@tran12. Please note that this webinar is being recorded and the materials will be placed on the NDI website at
> It's you -- if you experience any technical difficulties during the webinar, please use the chat box to send me Nakia Matthews a message or you may email me directly at .
> I will turn it over to Michael.
> Thank you, Nakia and thanks to each of you for joining us this afternoon. For those of you who are new to the National Disability Institute I'd like to take a moment to share information on our organization. The National Disability Institute is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to building a better economic future for Americans with disabilities. We are the first national organization committed exclusively to championing economic empowerment, asset development, finance and financial stability for all persons across the full spectrum of disabilities. National Disability Institute affects change through public education training, technical assistance, and policy development to help the one in three Americans with disabilities living in poverty to help them take steps to a brighter financial future. To learn more about the National Disability Institute go to
> We hope that if you are not already a member or partnering organization of the work that you will join us for the national movement on building a better economic future for persons with disabilities. The Real Economic Impact Network is an alliance of organizations and individuals dedicated to advancing the economic empowerment of people with disabilities. The network consists of more than 4500 members located throughout the United States that includes nonprofits, community tax coalitions, asset development organizations, financial education initiatives, corporations, and private sector businesses, federal state and local government and agencies, and individuals and families with disabilities all partnering together to join forces to embrace, promote, and pursue access to and inclusion of people with disabilities in the economic mainstream. To learn more about the Real Economic Impact Network please go to our website at .
> For today's webinar, we will learn about tools and resources available for the upcoming tax season. Each year many taxpayers with disabilities unnecessarily spend an average of $210 on tax preparer fees and miss out on claiming valuable tax credits they are eligible to receive. That is why improving access to free tax preparation services and favorable tax credits for persons with disabilities are 2 key strategies National Disability Institute focuses on each year. This webinar will provide an overview of the Taxpayer Opportunity Network including tools and resources they have available to support free tax preparation services in the upcoming tax season.
> We are grateful for today's speakers, we have 2 who are with CFED's Taxpayer Opportunity Network. The presenters for today are J.C..Craig who is the director of the taxpayer opportunity network and Cameron Parsons who was the senior network associate. With that I will turn it over to J.C..
> Hello and thank you for letting us present to you today. I really appreciate the opportunity and hope many of you will consider joining our network the Taxpayer Opportunity Network. To get started I would like to introduce our large organization, the Corporation for Enterprise Development or CFED. For those of you not familiar with CFED it's a national organization based in Washington, DC that has been working to expand opportunities for families and individuals for the past 30 years. Our goal is to give everyone a shot at the American dream, owning a home, going to college, starting a business, and providing a better life for their children. We do that by identifying good ideas, testing them out on the ground, a networking to take the best ideas to scale through networks of practice, public policy, and private markets. A core value is partnership, working with groups on the frontlines of service delivery.
> Working on that core value, the taxpayer opportunity network is one of those frontline networks of organizations. We are network that helps community tax providers and help taxpayers achieve opportunities they want to achieve and share the best ideas with each other from the network of community-based tax providers.
> Community-based tax assisted is generally talking about the Vita program. It trains volunteers who are low income taxpayers. The tax counseling for the elderly program which helps taxpayers over the age of 60 primarily. And we also have low income tax credit programs which help taxpayers with tax controversies. Those are people who get letters are audits on the IRS. There are currently over 95,000 volunteers participating in these programs across the country. They are critical to helping taxpayers access credits and refunds they deserve.
> Community tax assistance is critical to many taxpayers for number of reasons. Tax credits or refunds provide millions of dollars for hard-working taxpayers. Failing to file or filing and in accurate return can lead to fines, collections, have a spiral of debt and garnishment and credit damage. Accurate filing and basic tax understanding is critical to financial capability. And inaccurate return -- you need an accurate return to get a mortgage, college business eight and even citizenship. Finally taxes meet specific obligation. Most people do not enjoy paying taxes but are proud to be taxpayers who contribute to society. Taxpayers can demand their rights.
> Now we would like to go on a more personal level and Cameron wants to share a story about a taxpayer
> Hello everyone, this is Cameron Parsons and on the senior network associate at CFED working most directly with the Taxpayer Opportunity Network. If you join the network and have any difficult -- any difficulty I will be your point of contact and I look forward to working with you while. Before we go when I wanted to bring up this one story that was sent into us through the CFED story bank. Storytelling is a powerful way to communicate the impact of the organization and the impact of your program. In this case I want to introduce you to a wonderful woman named Clara who was a retired DC school employee from Silver Springs Maryland not that far outside Washington, DC. She was the legal guardian of her great-granddaughter. She attempted to file her taxes last year on her own but right at the filing deadline she learned of an error related to her granddaughter's Social Security number. Ultimately the entire return was rejected by the IRS. Fortunately she heard about the Montgomery County by the program a particularly strong program we partner with and work with. Their team was able to see her immediately and clear up what the problem was with her return. She is the matriarch of this family and she was empowered to fix this on her own. Next slide please.
> So they impact of the Taxpayer Opportunity Network. We connect community tax programs to each other and to related programs nationally to share critical timely information, tools and resources and to leverage expertise and opportunity. We build capacity of network members to deliver quality, cost-effective community tax services. We also couple those services with complementary financial capability services. We elevate the voices of community tax programs, volunteers, and taxpayers and directly advocate for improved policy supporting tax preparation assistance and a fair tax system that benefits low income households. We represent tax programs interest to the IRS and work to improve the IRS guidance tools and training materials. We also lift up innovations from the field to improve quality, efficiency, and connections to complementary services for tax programs around the country. By doing these we give local programs a hand up so they can give taxpayers a hand up.
> And now I would like to spend some time talking about one of the key benefits of becoming a Taxpayer Opportunity Network member and that is our capacity building tools. We have a vibrant learning community here at CFED across multiple networks but TON is leading the way. First of all in Arsenal we have webinars. These are live learning events like the one you are on now generally featuring a program that is leading in the field. It's essentially presented like a dialogue but it is capacity building. Secondly we will soon be launching our online trading. It's essentially presented like a dialogue but it is capacity building. Secondly we will soon be launching our . They are self paced and 34 Taxpayer Opportunity Network members. Becoming a taxpayer opportunity network is free. At our launch we will feature 2 courses that were requested by the membership. One is on intake an interview which will prepare you for the IRS intake interview test. The second is on quality review and how to perform its and succeed. Both are incredibly interactive and we are in the process of building out this library of training based on member needs. Finally we also have an incredible archive of all learning events. We average about 2 capacity building events per month and these are all available in our resource directory on our website on various topics. We invite you to go to the website and explore all of the learning opportunities there.
> For those of you who have been in the community of tax preparation long enough you would have heard of the various list serves for practitioners to communicate to one another about various issues. The Taxpayer Opportunity Network overseas and monitors these list serves and forms for discussion and oftentimes ideas for our webinars or next learning events were concerns that need to be elevated to the IRS will come from the Listserv. We have information on our website about how to join the Listserv. That is if you are not on their already. These are great. To peer exchanges. Often one question will generate three or four really good answers. We encourage people to join the taxpayer -- the tax roundtable.
> Of course we have inherited a treasure trove of resources and have pulled through the documents and presentations and tools that might be interesting to various sites. This is available in the aforementioned resource library. If you are operating a VITA site you can find tip sheets and handouts for both tax preparers and taxpayers on the Affordable Care Act. There are templates for press releases, forms, and more. We are constantly adding material to our resource library oftentimes based on things we discover using Listserv and we encourage you if you have material you think would be interesting to the field to send them directly to us and we will take a look.
> Now about 2 of our communications to our network of members which currently we have 650 members and 400 different organizations across the country. A lot of them come to us because they know they will be receiving this monthly update. In every addition we will have a spotlight which will highlight a topic of interest, a stellar program, and we discuss best practices. We have activity updates which will have news and information from a members to members by members, essential reading, and updates from the IRS. And as I will talk about on the next slide we have our marquee publication known as the Tax Prep Dispatch. We provide the links in case you have missed one. And we have links to all of our upcoming webinars and virtual events and timely recordings from our archives.
> Before I turn it back to J.C. I want to talk about the Tax Prep Dispatch, one of our fearless VITA leaders BarbaraDelBene has been writing these formerly known as the Q word which we have rebranded as the Tax Prep Dispatch. It's timely and topical and easy to understand. There are real world examples for practitioners. We always space it on a need in the field and she addresses basic concerns. In the off-season we provide these monthly, however at the height of taxis and these will be direct to your inbox and posted online on a weekly basis. All of our links to previous editions are available on our website.
> We have a strong learning community that we hope you will explore and I will turn it back to J.C. now.
> I think one of the most important things we have been able to do for the field is elevate concerns that are voiced to the IRS and also sometimes vendors such as tax wise, just yesterday I put one of our members in touch with tax wise to help them look at some concerns we have about the readability of tax wise in JAWS software and try to see if we can get that addressed quickly. We tried to collect information and prioritize it to share with the IRS so they work on first things first. We tried to connect members to people that are actually expertise in the area they are exploring. One example is sharing information from the quality assurance working group which is a set of VITA practitioners where almost every member has tend to go 15 years of experience as a VITA practitioner. We also work to place members on IRS advisory panels which have a lot of influence on the IRS overall. There is a panel called the IRS advisory committee and there is a TON member on that. There is the electronic transmittal advisory committee and we have a TON member on that. We are looking to keep adding members to those committees that influence the IRS.
> We have several leadership opportunities for the taxpayer opportunity network. We just selected our first taxpayer opportunity network national steering committee. There should be an announcement going out about that on Friday as we confirm that everyone who has been selected can actually serve. We're also developing a federal and state advocacy advisory group. We work with the quality assurance working group. There is a financial capability and a tax moment working group. We also have a self preparation working group and a volunteer management working group and these are groups that are looking for people back advise us on the best practices, best ways to serve community tax-preparation.
> We are working on developing national marketing and outreach opportunities. These are opportunities to tell the stories of your taxpayers and volunteers. One way as I shared earlier is through our story bank where we get stories from everyone out there and try to keep them together so if a reporter needs a story, we can get them connected with the member and share a story about a taxpayer experience. We're also going to try to leverage national media opportunities. We have EITC awareness Day on January 29. Many local programs provide a will be doing their kickoff events focused on EITC awareness Day on the 29th. We're trying to connect everyone who was working on an EITC events for that day with the national media, with the IRS, and with other stakeholders like NDI. So they have more resources and more connections to make their event a success. We have a similar day which is VITA awareness day on March 9. This is more targeted to getting taxpayers into tax site before the rush at the end of the tax season. March 9 is a good time for most VITA sites because they are quite as busy as they are at the beginning of the season. And taxpayers April 18 this year and that's another day where it's easy to get a national media buzz going and help support the VITA programs and the work they do.