Building Upon Successes Through Collaborative Efforts.

• Author: Shewbridge, Charles W. III

One of the Institute's strategic objectives for the year is to review TEI's advocacy process with a view toward more effectively promoting the Institute's "successes" and improving the means of achieving our advocacy goals. Ray Rossi of the Santa Clara Chapter has agreed to chair a task force on this objective, and the group has begun benchmarking with other organizations and developing a list of possible solutions. The task force is also carefully reviewing the many recommendations submitted by members as part of a recent Membership Satisfaction Survey. (A summary of the survey results is reprinted in this issue.)

Although I am confident that the Advocacy Task Force's report will contain many practical suggestions for improving TEI's effectiveness, it would be a mistake to conclude that the Institute is sitting back and waiting for the group to complete its work. Indeed, not only have TEI's committees scored some noteworthy advocacy successes in recent weeks, but we are also experimenting with how we can better promote the members' interests.

Advocacy Successes

For example, this summer after the House Committee on Appropriations voted to slash the IRS's funding, TEI stood up and firmly said "no." Well before any other tax organizations came forward, the Institute wrote key leaders of Congress to press them to remain true to the spirit of IRS reform and restructuring. We argued, effectively I believe, that if the IRS is to modernize itself and increase its level of customer/taxpayer service, it needs sufficient funding to do so. Obviously, we were not alone in urging that the IRS's funding be restored, and I am pleased to report that the legislation, as passed by Congress and sent to the President, was in line with TEI's recommendation.

I am also pleased that the on-again, off-again tax bill contains an Institute-supported provision to protect the confidentiality of advance pricing agreements and related documents. Although it is unclear when the provision will be enacted, with both the Administration and Congress in favor of keeping APAs confidential, it seems likely that the threat to the APA program posed by BNA's disclosure lawsuit has been circumscribed. (Note: At a recent status hearing in the BNA-IRS lawsuit, the court asked whether TEI supported the government's motion to hold a disclosure order in abeyance until the legislative process was completed; our counsel, who attended at the Justice Department's request, emphatically...