Give New Employees Introductory Memo on Tax Credit Management

It’s common to hire new employees who may have some experience in conventional site management, but no experience in tax credit site management. Because the tax credit program is complicated, you can’t expect these new employees to learn all the rules overnight. But until they get tax credit experience, they may pose a threat to the owner’s tax credits. That’s why it’s a good idea to give new employees a short, written summary of the tax credit program as early as you can.

To help you do so, we’ve prepared a Model Memo: Introduction to Tax Credit Management. It’s an overview of how tax credit management differs from conventional site management. If your employees read the overview before they begin training, they’ll have a clearer understanding of what lies ahead. Plus, as your employees become more familiar with the tax credit program, they can refer to this overview to see where a particular rule or concept fits into tax credit management in general.

How Overview Helps

Since many new employees may not have experience with tax credit sites, reading a summary of the tax credit program early on can help them understand what tax credit compliance will require of them. Our overview focuses on the ways that tax credit management differs from conventional site management. This can help employees recognize situations where they need to know tax credit rules and lower the chances that they’ll make errors that cost the owner its tax credits—and cost you the owner’s future business.

     Our overview can also be helpful to employees with tax credit management experience. As employees learn more of the complexities of the tax credit program, they may lose sight of how things fit in. By reading the overview at a later date, your experienced employees can see how what they’ve learned fits into the broad scheme of the program. If your employees know the rules, but don’t understand how they relate, they may be more inclined to make errors.

What Overview Covers

Our overview assumes new employees have experience only in conventional site management. Here’s what it covers:

Introduction. The overview opens by welcoming new employees to tax credit management. To encourage them, it points out how their experience in conventional site management will help them succeed in tax credit management.

The overview then lets employees know that they’ll get all additional training they need on the job, from seminars, and through books. It tells your new employees that reading it will allow them to start thinking about tax credit management before they begin any training. And once they get some training employees can refer to this overview to see how what they’ve learned relates to tax credit management overall.

How tax credit management is different. The overview goes on to list eight ways that tax credit management differs from conventional site management, starting with the idea that it must work toward maintaining compliance. Under each item there’s a short discussion that focuses on the duties that each difference creates for the tax credit manager.

The overview discusses only rules that are fundamental to the tax credit program. It’s best to leave specifics for later training sessions. This way, new employees won’t be overwhelmed with details at the start.