Every December, The Franchise Tax Board holds their Annual Taxpayer Bill of Rights Meeting, where they welcome suggestions from the public on how to improve! You can make suggestions on changes to policies and/or tax laws that will improve “the system” for all Californians.

This year’s meeting is on Monday, December 10, 2018 at 1:30 pm. The meeting location is: The Franchise Tax Board, 9646 Butterfield Way, Town Center, Gerald Goldberg Auditorium, Sacramento, California, 95827. While an RSVP is not required, they would like one by December 3. You can send your RSVP to FTBAdvocate@ftb.ca.gov

During the meeting, the FTB will invite people up to the microphone one at a time to give their suggestions out loud to the FTB’s Board Members (who are currently Betty Yee, Controller, Michael Cohen, Director of the Department of Finance, and George Runner, Elected Board of Equalization Representative).

If you cannot attend in person, you can still submit a suggestion! Simply send an email to FTBAdvocate@ftb.ca.gov with your suggestion before the meeting. They would prefer them by November 26, but they will accept suggestions up until the meeting day.

All Policy Change Suggestions will get a response, called a Formal Resolution, by February 1, 2019.

You may be wondering why you’ve never heard about this meeting before? I mean, if they do it every year, you should have heard about it at some point, right?

This Annual Taxpayer Bill of Rights Meeting is actually a California State Right, pursuant to Revenue and Taxation Code section 21006(b)(2). Even though the FTB does technically meet the minimum required by law to inform the public of these meetings, the reality is the FTB goes to great lengths to hide this Right from the general public.

FTB representatives are trained to tell Taxpayers that if they are unhappy with the FTB’s policies or procedures, the Taxpayer needs to contact their State Level Legislators to complain; that there is nothing the FTB can do about changing policies or laws. This, of course, is a lie, since the law says that Taxpayers can make requests at this Annual Meeting and that the Board will consider all suggestions.

When the FTB sends out written correspondence, they will frequently include Form 4058, called California Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. Form 4058 conveniently omits information about the Annual Taxpayer Bill of Rights Meeting. The Taxpayer has to carefully read form 4058 to find out that form 4058C exists. The Taxpayer then has to go out of their way to find 4058C and read it to find out that the Annual Taxpayer Bill of Rights Meetings exist.

Please note that form 4058 and form 4058C are both called California Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, and the brochure covers are almost identical. I believe this was deliberately designed in order to confuse Taxpayers into thinking that 4058 and 4058C are the same brochure so that the Taxpayer never bothers to actually read 4058C and find out this right exists.

It is also important to note that Form 4058C contains no directions given on how to submit a request to the Annual Taxpayers Bill of Rights Meeting; it just discloses that you have the right to submit one. As far as I could find – and I did look – there are no instructions anywhere on the FTB’s website on how to submit a request. In fact, when I type “how does someone submit a change request at the Franchise Tax Board Taxpayer Bill of Rights Annual Meeting?” into the Duck Duck Go web browser, not one single link came up that contained information on how to submit a suggestion.

The only place that I could find on the FTB website that discloses the existence of this Taxpayer Right (beyond Form 4058C) was under “Franchise Tax Board Meetings.” But if you don’t know this right exists in the first place, you would never think to click on “Franchise Tax Board Meetings.”

Last Autumn, I found out about the Annual Bill of Rights Meeting from a professional Tax Lobbyist. Only four people submitted requests, and I was the only one who was not a professional in the Tax field. One of the Policy Change Items that I asked for was that FTB employees disclose that such a meeting exists when Taxpayer’s complain about unfair policies.

In her Formal Resolution, the Taxpayer’s Advocate answered “…Meeting with a representative cross-section of industry and tax professionals allows us to hear the concerns of taxpayers, the majority of which now engage tax professionals. Additionally, we contact our Trade Media partners and others prior to the annual meeting to also gauge their concerns and those of the individuals and businesses they represent.”

This answer is unacceptable. Hiding this Right from the Taxpayers at large, then assigning this right to a proxy without informing the Taxpayer of this proxy system, and choosing a proxy who only represents the upper classes, thus leaving the working poor taxpayers unrepresented, is a clear violation of California State Taxpayer Rights.

I am trying to spread the word about this State Right. Please share this information with other California Taxpayers. Let’s flood the meeting with suggestions on how to improve the FTB! Let’s band together in a positive, constructive and legal way to demand that the broken system be fixed!