FTA Tax Breaks

In this LIVE episode, taped during the 2026 FTA Annual Meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. FTA Chief Operating Officer Ryan Minnick is joined by four guests - David Casey, the Secretary for the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, Ananias Williams, the CIO for the Georgia Department of Revenue, Greer Allison, the Director of ITS for the Tennessee Department of Revenue, and Patric Starr, the Enterprise Pr...

GenAI is evolving at a breakneck pace — and organizations across the private sector are racing to keep up. But how are they actually building meaningful knowledge, not just awareness? In this episode of the Tax Breaks Podcast, FTA Chief Operating Officer Ryan Minnick sits down with Alex Denniston, Director of Insights & Innovation at Factor, to dig into exactly that. Alex draws on his experien...

Get ready for one of our most energizing Tax Breaks episodes yet—recorded live and unfiltered in front of a room full of state and local tax administrators! Join FTA's Executive Director Sharonne Bonardi and Chief Operating Officer Ryan Minnick as they sit down with former IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel at the 2025 FTA Compliance Workshop for a wide-ranging conversation about the current state of t...

Tax agencies hold an abundance of data but are they using it to its full potential? In this latest episode of the Tax Breaks Podcast, FTA Chief Operating Officer Ryan Minnick and Comptroller of Maryland Chief Deputy Comptroller Andy Schaufele dive into this critical question, exploring the importance for tax administrators to define their approach to data, performance measurement, and accountabili...

This live recording of the Tax Breaks podcast brings together a panel of forward-thinking leaders for an examination of technologies set to redefine tax administration. From generative AI and intelligent automation to real-time data pipelines and secure cloud ecosystems, Ryan Minnick hosts a trio of tax technology's top leaders as they share the breakthroughs they’re piloting today and the bets th...

Chiquita Hills with the Virginia Department of Taxation and Wisconsin Department of Revenue’s Kyle Duerstein are veterans within tax administration collections, leading these vital programs within their respective states. They joined FTA's Director of Compliance and Regional Sections Charlie Helms for this enlightening conversation about collections, with all the challenges and rewards that come f...

Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman gives a sneak peek into a learning session she's leading at FTA's Annual Meeting in Chicago on boosting earned income tax credit (EITC) uptake in Maryland through data, outreach, and innovation. Lierman discusses a new research partnership the Comptroller of Maryland has with the Urban Institute, aimed at increasing EITC claims through targeted data analysis, co...

Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman gives a sneak peek into a learning session is leading at FTA's Annual Meeting in Chicago on boosting earned income tax credit (EITC) uptake in Maryland through data, outreach, and innovation. Lierman discusses a new research partnership the Comptroller of Maryland has with the Urban Institute, aimed at increasing EITC claims through targeted data analysis, commu...

In this episode, we sit down with Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman to discuss insights from a new research partnership with the Urban Institute aimed at increasing earned income tax credit claims through targeted data analysis, community engagement, and taxpayer education.

This episode of Tax Breaks published just off the heels of Women’s History Month with FTA Chief Operating Officer Ryan Minnick catching up with recently retired Multistate Tax Commission General Counsel Nancy Prosser . Prosser looks back with gratitude on her esteemed tax career, strongly rooted in her time with the Texas Office of Attorney General and Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts where sh...

Leadership & Talent Development Consultant and generations expert Kitty Kollmeyer takes us on a trip through the ages to better understand our multigenerational workforce and how we can all work better together.

In this episode of FTA Tax Breaks, we talk with Marina Sallas with the Missouri Department of Revenue and Lauren Smith with the South Carolina Department of Revenue about the intersection or kindness and employee engagement and its impact on tax administration. Both of their organizations are known and have been recognized for promoting kindness through appreciation, engagement, and good wellness...

Happy Global Ethics Day! Our latest FTA Tax Breaks guest believes we are well into an unprecedented global era of transparency, and you'll want to know why that matters. As our member tax agencies already know, the journey toward building and maintaining public trust can be challenging, influenced by rapidly changing technology, transparency, and expectations coming from our increasingly complex a...

In this episode, FTA COO Ryan Minnick dives deep into the world of virtual reality (VR) and deep fakes with Michigan State and Stanford professor, Robby Ratan! If you caught Professor Ratan's captivating keynotes earlier this year at the FTA Annual Meeting in Long Beach or the Technology Conference in Boston, you know you’re in for a treat. In this episode, Robby takes us on an eye-opening journey...

How do you go from crisis to solution in less than 5 hours? For our first-ever LIVE episode from the main stage at the 2024 FTA Technology Conference, COO Ryan Minnick sits down with Rick Offenbecher, Amanda Mosel, and Brad Thome from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue to discuss their agency's response to the recent CrownStrike vulnerability.

Following a brief hiatus after our successful first season of conversations with leaders from the public, private, and academic sectors, FTA Tax Breaks Podcast is back for season two and in a big way with an amazing guest! Immediate Past IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig joined FTA COO Ryan Minnick for a fireside chat this episode, sharing stories from his time guiding the IRS through one of the tough...

SAS Principal Social Innovation Manager I-Sah Hsieh joins FTA COO Ryan Minnick for an exciting and at times philosophical discussion of AI and how the intersection of trust and credibility will play a central role in how this rapidly advancing technology continues to be harnessed and used by organizations. This discussion goes into the ethical considerations regarding AI’s operational uses, and ho...

The Utah State Tax Commission is taking an associative approach to meeting customer needs by understanding the customer journey from the beginning. It’s part of Utah’s “Voice of the Customer” project that takes into consideration several elements from understanding the customer’s issue by knowing not only the immediate concern but what brought them to that moment and how the agency can best help t...

In this competitive labor market, businesses and organizations of all types are looking for every advantage when it comes to recruiting and retaining talented people. This is especially challenging for tax administrators and other government agencies that have the additional challenge of filling positions that pay less compared to their private sector counterparts. But overcoming that hurdle and t...

The Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) office plays a critical role working in the interest of the federal taxpayers. In this episode of the FTA Tax Breaks podcast, we talk with the TAS director, National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins, about her office's work as the "voice of the taxpayer." Collins shares what her office does and how it works, the good work they are currently doing, and upcoming ini...

On this episode of FTA Tax Breaks, IRS Deputy Chief Taxpayer Experience Officer Courtney Kay-Decker joined us for a look inside the IRS’s Taxpayer Experience Office (TXO). And there was plenty to talk about as the TXO continues to elevate the quality of taxpayer interactions with the agency by identifying taxpayer trends and best practices while implementing service-wide taxpayer experience improv...

Ryan sits down with Frank Nestore, VP at Mathtech, to discuss project management, how projects differ between government and the private sector, and what makes a project successful.

In this episode, guests Dia Harris from the North Carolina Department of Revenue and Rebecca Lopez Kriss from the Philadelphia Department of Revenue join Ryan Minnick, FTA COO, for a conversation about the role of communications in government and how reaching every citizen where they are is critical to the performance of revenue agencies nationwide.

Chris "Cash" Ashley, Principal EQ Evangelist at AWS, joins FTA's COO Ryan Minnick for a conversation about neuroplasticity, emotional intelligence (EI or EQ), the science that supports it, and how EQ can unlock superpowers of collaboration and leadership.

FTA's COO Ryan Minnick is joined by Dr. Ellie Pavlick, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Brown University and member of the Google AI research team, for a conversation about generative AI, what we do and don't know, and how we might see it used in highly regulated industries like tax administration.