Fall 2009
When George Figueroa of Molina HealthCare, president of the Arizona Chapter, called in August to invite me to attend the chapter’s September or October meeting, I looked at the calendar and sighed. I had a conflict for the September date, and the October meeting was slated with just a few days before I was to leave for the Institute’s 64th Annual Conference.
Sandwiching in another cross-country trip before the trip to San Antonio was not high on my list of priorities, but George was both persistent and persuasive. He pointed out that it had been several years since I had visited the Arizona Chapter, noting that the chapter had done a good job of recruiting several new members who, because of travel restrictions, would likely not be able to attend Institute-level events in the near term. They, in particular, would be interested in learning about the new continuing education benefits that TEI was rolling out with Thomson Reuters (which are discussed in Neil Traubenberg’s column), as well as the plans for the Institute’s new website. George also said the whole group would be interested in learning about TEI’s involvement in the tax reform debate and getting the “skinny” from Washington on both health reform and tax reform.
The clincher, however — in addition to a very reasonable airfare thanks to Southwest Airlines — was George’s informing me that Professor Don Goldman of Arizona State University would be there to discuss ASU’s Master of Tax program and to thank the chapter for its ongoing support for the program through a scholarship grant. Since the expansion of TEI’s Social Responsibility Initiative in general and its Scholarship program in particular remain top goals, I welcomed the opportunity to meet Don, a former Deloitte partner who joined the full-time ASU faculty in 2001, and to show support for the Arizona Chapter’s exemplary efforts.
Don provided the chapter with an excellent overview of ASU’s Masters program, including the recent decision to offer both a one-year, full-time option and a two-year, part-time option. He also eloquently thanked the chapter for funding a scholarship for a worthy student. Meeting him did indeed make my visit to the Arizona Chapter special.
Even without it, though, the trip to Phoenix would have been worthwhile. For one thing, it allowed me to catch up with good friends like Marty Brandt, Grace Lalicata, and Bob Buns, who have all served as president of the chapter and continue to contribute. I also had the opportunity to visit with rising chapter leaders including David Mandelbaum, first vice president, and Mandeep Sabharwal, secretary, who shared the chapter’s plans to meet with challenges posed by the economic downturn and, beyond that, Arizona’s changing business community. It also allowed me to meet those new chapter members that George Figueroa had told me about and to see first hand the energy and enthusiasm in the Phoenix tax community. I thank the entire group for the courtesies and hospitality they extended to me.
Website Developments . . . What’s Next, Twitter?
One of the topics I discussed in Phoenix was TEI’s new website. While the site will not be launched until 2010, the Institute has made considerable progress in designing a site that will help members around the world expand their tax network — to give them the website they want and deserve.
More than a decade ago, TEI launched www.tei.org in cooperation with Coopers & Lybrand and its pioneering effort, Tax News Network. One of the people at Coopers & Lybrand and then PricewaterhouseCoopers who helped keep TNN up and running was Lars DeSalvio who joined TEI’s staff five years ago as our Director of IT and Web Services. Lars has overseen both the maintenance of our current site and our efforts to first improve and now replace the site.
The current site was launched in September 2004, and it provided members with the features and capabilities that you told us you wanted: a vehicle for joining TEI, paying your dues, getting information about, and registering for educational programs. It also gave members a confidential place where they could engage in candid discussions with their peers about all manner of tax and tax management topics, as well as a solid if somewhat rudimentary job bank where members could post job openings. Finally, the 2004 effort made it possible for each of our chapters to maintain its own site.
That vision was — and, I think, remains — sound, but the march of technology and feedback from members told us that TEI needs to upgrade its web presence. In particular, we recognized the need to provide our 54 chapters with a broader array of website services.
For well more than a year, we have been working with a dedicated group of volunteers, four different vendors, and one another to identify our members’ needs and to design and implement a new site to satisfy them. It would be silly to deny that we have experienced some hiccups here or there — including the delays that seem endemic in IT projects — but we have made substantial progress.
In addition to comments about the current site, we have received helpful comparisons of our site with those of other organizations, including some of our chapters, and we have striven to keep the features and functionalities that members like and to address their concerns about what was missing and what could be done better. For example, we are improving the Look & Feel of the site by building it on a Sharepoint platform, which has become the industry standard and will make it easier (and less costly) for us to adapt the site in response to member needs.
We are also working to enhance the content that is available on the site. Significantly, TEI will soon be hiring a web content manager, who will be responsible not only for ensuring the timely posting of information on TEI’s advocacy, educational, and other activities, but also working with professional service firms to aggregate relevant information for TEI members and their staff. We will also be able to improve our confidential discussion forums, and are adding a blog feature to our website, which we will launch with a State and Local Tax blog, moderated by TEI’s very own Dan De Jong.
We are especially pleased that we will be able to improve our 54 chapter sites, providing our chapter leaders with a template that will be at once more robust and easier to manage. Thus, chapters will be able to manage registration for their meetings — including the collection of meeting fees through our e-commerce feature; to communicate easily with their whole membership (by sending emails with attachments); and to maintain a prospects/non-member list.
These efforts are all aimed at one thing: giving TEI members and other tax professionals a reason — or a multiple of reasons — for visiting www.tei.org. Thus, TEI continues to adhere to the philosophy set forth in “Field of Dreams”: If you build it, they will come.
Finally, TEI is actively exploring whether it should use “new media” in helping members to expand their professional networks. In addition to blogs, we are investigating how other organizations are using tools such as podcasts, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Believe me, I never thought I would write a sentence like that, but reality is what reality is: Increasingly, companies and other organizations more technologically engaged than TEI has been are taking advantage of the myriad “channels” available to us. I invite your comments on what your company and other organizations are doing in terms of social networking, and whether and how you think TEI should moved forward. One thing I guarantee you is this: I will not be sending out Twitter feeds on what I am eating or thinking about wearing (even to TEI meetings).
Farewell to Good Friends of TEI
This issue contains too many “In Memoriam” items. Special note should be given to two friends of the Institute whose contributions to the tax community extended far beyond TEI but whose efforts in support of TEI’s mission won them both plaudits and Institute-level awards.
Robert C. Plumb served as TEI President more than 40 years ago, at a time when the Institute’s size and activities were modest by 21st Century standards but when its activities in behalf of the business tax community were vitally important. I did not meet Bob until years after he retired and became an Honorary Member (in 1979) — it was in 1994 when TEI celebrated its golden anniversary — but 29 years after he served as president, he was still interested, interesting, and engaged in what his organization was doing. Bob was also active member in other organizations, including the AICPA (which also elected him to Honorary Membership), the National Tax Association, and several industry chemical and pharmaceutical industry organizations. I last talked with Bob at the Institute’s 2008 Annual Conference in Boston, and I extend the In-stitute’s condolences to his family.
I met William E. Williams shortly after I joined the Institute’s staff in 1982. Bill had retired as Deputy Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service — the same position his one-time assistant Mike Murphy held before becoming TEI’s Executive Director in 1992 — and was working at what is now Dickstein Shapiro, a law firm based in Washington.
Bill also spent a few years as the Editor of The Tax Executive, and it was in that capacity that I learned what a thoughtful, diligent, and generous individual he was. I learned much from what he did and how he did it. A true class act and long a strong advocate for effective, balanced tax administration, Bill did not know a stranger and made me, a relative newcomer to the tax world, feel welcome. Bill received TEI’s Distinguished Service Award in 1983 in recognition of his long-time government service, and was a fixture at the Midyear Conference for many years.
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David Fine, whose year-end report as the Houston Chapter’s 2008-2009 president was reprinted in the last issue, recently wrote to share a message that a recipient of one of the chapter’s scholarships had sent to Ira Shepard, a tax professor at the University of Houston. Anthony Viegas-Haws wrote the following:
I am not sure if you remember me, but I took Federal Income Tax from you in 2006. I was also one of your students who received the Tax Executives Institute Scholarship. After graduation I worked with Amin Nosrat at Deloitte in the International Tax group. About 8 months ago, I took a position with Baker & McKenzie working in the Zurich, Switzerland, office in the international private banking group.
Your course on taxation was one of the most difficult courses I ever took because of my lack of knowledge of the tax code. (I was a liberal arts major in undergrad.) However, its influence on my career has been significant. For this reason, I wanted to send you a copy of the article I just published in the Oxford Journal Trust & Trustees [entitled “The Foundation as a trust substitute under US federal tax law”]. The article discusses the civil law foundation’s classification for U.S. federal tax purposes. I hope you enjoy the read.
Congratulations to Anthony ... and to the Houston Chapter.
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Last but not least, I have been remiss in noting the addition to two members to TEI’s staff. Davene Holland (dholland@tei.org) has become the Institute’s Membership Coordinator, and will work with Coleman Kane, Director of Membership and Chapter Relations, in managing the application process, keeping TEI’s membership database up to date, and providing top-notch customer service to TEI’s 7,000 members and 54 chapters. Gil Gotiangco (ggotiangco@tei.org) joined the staff in September as our IT/Web Specialist. He works with Lars DeSalvio, Director of IT and Web Services, in managing TEI’s membership database, website, and other IT resources. I welcome them both.
Timothy J. McCormally
TEI Executive Director