14th Annual States’ Taxation Conference

Tax Advocacy - Dear Commissioner

DCTR Jim Richards from Territory Revenue has presented on:

  1. suggestions provided by the revenue offices to improve the persuasiveness and effectiveness of written submissions;
  2. comparative obligations of taxpayers and advisers for honesty a full and true disclosure;
  3. comparative processes for informal administrative review, raising matters of policy and approaching a minister or the ombudsman; and
  4. suggested approaches to address ‘unfair’ outcomes.

I have presented on:

  1. general and technical writing style lessons that may improve written advocacy;

  2. effective structuring and corroborating taxable facts;

  3. the CRAC method - (C)onclusion, (R)ule, (A)nalyisis, (C)ases - for argument writing;

  4. drafting approaches for State Taxes internal reviews and objections with sample precedents;

  5. drafting approaches for penalty remission requests with sample precedents; and

  6. drafting approaches for interest remission requests with sample precedents.

It is great to have both sides of the table presented and encouraging that the approaches are highly aligned.