Industry Issue Resolution
Program Seeks New Applicants

WASHINGTON - Business taxpayers are encouraged to submit tax issues they believe could be resolved more efficiently with new or improved guidance for the Industry Issue Resolution Program (IIR) by March 31, 2004, to be considered for the next selection process.

Under the IIR Program, taxpayers, industry associations, and other interested parties submit business tax issues for possible resolution through published or administrative guidance. For each issue selected, an IIR team of IRS and Treasury personnel gather relevant facts from taxpayers or other interested parties and recommend guidance to resolve the issue.

The goal is to resolve tax issues that are common to a significant number of business taxpayers by providing more effective guidance. Under the program, the IRS has issued guidance that reduced costs, burden and uncertainty for taxpayers. These include:

• Clarification of the depreciation of gasoline station pump canopies (published in Revenue Ruling 2003-54).
• A safe harbor method for depreciating certain fiber cable used in cable television distribution systems as a unit of property (published in Revenue Procedure 2003-63).
• An option for family day care providers to use standard meal and snack rates in computing the deductible cost of food provided to eligible children under their care (published in Revenue Procedure 2003-22).

These successes were made possible following suggestions submitted by industry associations and others representing both small and large business taxpayers.

IRS will review submissions semi-annually, after March 31 and August 31 of each year. All requests received by March 31, 2004, will be considered for IIR project selections that are expected to be included in the 2004-2005 Treasury and IRS Guidance Priority List.

Submitting an issue to the IRS is easy. Just e-mail your suggestion to IIR@IRS.gov, as explained in Revenue Procedure 2003-36.

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