Q&A
Office of the Taxpayer Advocate: structure, staffing, and case resolution
3:12:03
·
3 min
Council Member Brannan inquires about the Office of the Taxpayer Advocate (OTA), its potential codification, staffing, and case resolution. Commissioner Niblack discusses the value of the OTA and provides details on its operations.
- Commissioner supports the OTA, whether codified or not, citing its value to both New Yorkers and the Department of Finance
- Current staffing: 12 active headcount (9 in OTA, 3 in parking summons advocate office, 1 vacancy)
- 18% increase in cases and inquiries this year, but the office is managing well within target cycle times
- Most common reasons for denying relief: missed deadlines for exemptions and incomplete applications
Justin Brannan
3:12:03
Okay.
3:12:03
The Office of the Taxpayer Advocate.
3:12:05
Is DOF in favor of codifying this position?
Preston Niblack
3:12:11
Let me let me just start by recognizing the taxpayer advocate, Robin Li, who's here, and the amazing job that Robin does.
3:12:22
The Office of the Taxpayer Advocate is, I think, incredibly valuable to New Yorkers.
3:12:28
People are increasingly aware of it, increasingly use it using it.
3:12:32
It's also actually valuable to us.
3:12:34
As you know, part of their mandate is to review sort of systematic problems, in service delivery and to make recommendations to that.
3:12:42
And that you know, those recommendations are to you, but they're to me as well and and the department.
3:12:48
And that's, you know, the subject of an annual report.
3:12:52
And we look at those every year and ad address them as we are able to.
3:12:57
So codified or not, OTA is an extremely valuable part of the Department of Finance that I I support, whether it's in law or, as an office where
Justin Brannan
3:13:10
And what's the headcount in that office?
Preston Niblack
3:13:13
Including the office of the parking summons advocate, which is separate.
3:13:18
It was not legislated legislatively in the same legislation that created the OTA.
3:13:23
There are 12 active head count right now.
3:13:27
We have 9 people in OTA and 3 in the, parking summons advocate office with one vacancy to fill there.
Justin Brannan
3:13:36
Speaking of, the headcount at OTA, so is the current budgeted headcount, do we think, sufficient to complete all these inquiries?
Preston Niblack
3:13:46
Yes.
3:13:46
I mean, I, we have seen an uptick, about 18% in cases and inquiries this year, which we, you know, ascribe to a couple of different causes.
3:13:59
But so far, they've been keeping up very well.
3:14:02
The, you know, cycle time that we watch for closing out cases and inquiries has remained within our targets largely.
3:14:10
So
Justin Brannan
3:14:11
they do
Preston Niblack
3:14:12
they they work very hard and they do they're very dedicated and they do amazing amazing work, so they always step up.
Justin Brannan
3:14:19
According to, the OTA annual report, 253 cases in the past 3 years have resulted in cases where no relief could be granted.
3:14:29
Of these, a 154 were due to law or DOF policy.
3:14:34
Could you tell us what specific law or DOF policy were the most common reasons for, OTA denying relief?
Preston Niblack
3:14:41
The the most common reasons are related to just missing deadlines, honestly.
3:14:45
I mean, there are statutory deadlines for personal exemptions and commercial exemptions that, if people miss, there's not really any relief that we can offer.
3:14:56
And there are, of course, requirements for applications that if people don't meet, we're unable to approve them or process them.
3:15:05
So that's most common issue is probably that people simply don't, provide us what is needed in order to approve an application.
Justin Brannan
3:15:14
Okay.
3:15:15
I got a couple more, but I wanna give my colleagues some time to ask questions.
