"A true community" - returning to core principles.

• Author: McCormally, Timothy J.
• Position: Tax Executives Institute

When Paul Smith founded Tax Executives Institute in 1944, his goal was at once simple and audacious--to create a "true community" to help tax professionals simplify compliance, enhance opportunities for effective tax planning, and advance the goal of fair, rational, and equitable taxation. True Community--that's the term that Harvard Business School Professor Peter Wilson used to characterize TEI 15 years ago as the Institute observed its golden anniversary. It's a term that maintains its currency today. Reflecting on the Institute's founding, Paul Smith wrote that he wanted to create an environment when a tax professional would not "sit like mummy in fear of revealing corporate secrets." He said that he "would like to be able to sit around a table and discuss the problems affecting his business and YES, going beyond that, be able to pick up the telephone and discuss them with his fellow members."

From the outset, Paul Smith envisioned two types of meeting. One would feature speakers from the federal and state tax departments, which would enable members to develop "very cordial relationships" with public officials. The other would take the form of a workshop, with topics chosen by the Institute's committees (which at the time numbered two--federal and state & local). These workshops would be limited to members, and would permit participants to "exchange forms, ideas, and methods of operating tax departments" and pick up "short cuts for efficient tax administration."

Sound familiar? From my vantage point, Paul Smith's 65-year-old vision describes the 21st century TEI to a T. All across the world, TEI members are coming together to learn, to exchange ideas and insights, and to share secrets. To be sure, the Institute has evolved in ways that Paul Smith did not anticipate. For example, he did not favor an active role for the organization in legislative lobbying. But the evolution has come naturally (moving from the bottom up as much as the top down), and as active as TEI has become as an advocacy group (simply scan the table of contents of this issue for confirmation of that), it has never departed from its core mission as an organization devoted to networking and education--to building and sustaining a true community.

Minnesota Chapter's President's Seminar

I was able to witness how large and effective a community TEI has become when I visited the Minnesota Chapter in mid-April for its annual President's Seminar. For 26 years, the chapter has...