IRS Updates IRM, Can Now Continue Processing Award Determinations
The IRS Whistleblower Office announced August 7th that they finally updated two sections of the Internal Revenue Manual (“IRM”), IRM 25.2.2, Information and Whistleblower Awards – Whistleblower Award and IRM 1.1.26, Organization and Staffing –...
New Leadership for the IRS Whistleblower Office.
The IRS announced this afternoon that the Acting Director (Office of Professional Responsibility) Lee Martin has been selected to be the next Director of the Whistleblower Office, effective August 3, 2015. Director Stephen Whitlock will remain with the IRS and...
Whistleblower Office FY 2014 Annual Report Released, What Did We Learn?
Whistleblower Office FY 2014 Annual Report Released, What Did We Learn? Key Points from the Body of the Report Final Regulations were a “top priority” and added “necessary clarification and provided additional guidance for whistleblower submissions...
IRS Commissioner Responds to Senator Grassley’s Question Regarding the Whistleblower Office
The office of Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) issued a press release yesterday announcing that the Senator had received a response from IRS Commissioner John Koskinen to questions Senator Grassley had submitted to the record after a February hearing on the IRS budget....
Tax Court: Providing information to Federal agencies before filing Form 211 does not render the whistleblower ineligible for an award under section 7623(b).
The Tax Court released Whistleblower 21276-13W v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 144 T.C. No. 15 today. While this decision is positive news for some whistleblowers, it is also a reminder of the importance of following best practices when filing a...
Budget Amendment to Expedite IRS Whistleblower Awards Agreed to in Senate by Unanimous Consent.
It is a rare that one can say that something exciting for tax whistleblowers has occurred with the proposed budget. However, today is that day. On March 25th, Senator Wicker submitted amendment S.AMDT.620, which is co-sponsored by Senator Grassley. According to...
IRS previews IRS Whistleblower Report at Federal Bar Association 2015 Law Conference.
The IRS Whistleblower Program took center-stage again, this time at the Federal Bar Association Section on Taxation's 2015 Law Conference in Washington, DC. Scott led the lively panel discussion about the IRS Whistleblower Program with Kevin Gillin, Special...
IRS report says audits of large companies are down 20%
A consequence of several years of budget cuts at the IRS is a decline in their enforcement efforts. The Wall Street Journal has recently run several stories detailing these statistics, noting new data that shows an overall decline in IRS audit rates for...
Abusive tax structures schemes make the IRS’s “Dirty Dozen” list for 2015.
Each year the IRS publishes a list of common tax scams that taxpayers may encounter during the tax year. These annual lists serve as a way for the IRS to remind taxpayers to use caution during the tax season to protect themselves against a wide range of...
Whistleblower awards may soon be free from sequestration cuts
As we have written about in the past, for the last few years IRS whistleblower awards under section 7623 have been subject to sequestration reductions of between 7.2% and 8.7% (currently 7.3% for fiscal year 2015 awards) pursuant to the Balanced Budget and Emergency...
Congressional Report: Revenue Losses From Corporate Profit Shifting May Top $90 Billion
The Congressional Research Service (“CRS”) updated a report on tax havens to reflect new revenue-raising estimates for proposals for reducing international tax evasion. The report, updated last week, noted that estimates of revenue losses from...
Senators Wyden and Grassley Write About the IRS Whistleblower Program
Senator Ron Wyden, the current chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Senator Chuck Grassley, the former chairman, jointly wrote an article in Politico discussing an important issue to us, the prioritization of whistleblower claims by the IRS. They...
Sequester Continues to Reduce IRS Whistleblower Awards
October 1st 2014 marks the beginning of fiscal year 2015 and a new sequestration reduction rate for whistleblower awards. According to an OMB Report on the reductions for fiscal year 2015, every award payment made to a whistleblower under section 7623 on or...
Director Whitlock Hints at Large Payments for Whistleblowers
Tax whistleblowing took center-stage at the American Bar Association Section of Taxation meeting in Denver last Friday. I had the pleasure of participating in a round table discussion with fellow panelists, Holly Styles, Senior Counsel in the IRS Office of...
IRS Commissioner Thanks God For Whistleblowers
If there was ever a question whether IRS Commissioner, John Koskinen, believed in the IRS Whistleblower Program, that question was answered affirmatively in his remarks before the Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund. At one point, Koskinen even referred to...
IRS releases a statement from Commissioner Koskinen and an updated filed directive for the IRS Whistleblower Program.
The IRS released two documents today on their website, Commissioner Koskinen Statement regarding Whistleblower Program and Deputy Commissioner for Service and Enforcement Memorandum. The Commissioner’s statement reaffirmed his commitment and support...
Final Regulations Are Here!!!
The IRS has finally released the Final Treasury Regulations that we have all been waiting for. While, there were not as many in the Final Regulations as we would have liked to have seen; the changes that were made were important ones. Some of the pros and cons of...
Another Piece of the Tax Court’s Jurisdictional Puzzle
The United States Tax Court released an opinion today, Whistleblower 22231-12W v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, which continues to piece together the bounds of the Tax Court’s jurisdiction. The Tax Court held that the IRS Whistleblower Office could not...
Tax Professor Makes the Case for State Tax Whistleblower Statutes
In the third part of a four part series on qui tam suits, Jennifer Carr of Tax Analysts interviewed University of California, Davis School of Law tax professor Dennis J. Ventry, Jr. about his article, “Not Just Whistling Dixie: The Case for Tax Whistleblowers in...
Tax Court finds it has Jurisdiction to Review Determinations Where Information was Provided Before and After The Effective Date of Section 7623(b).
The Tax Court held that it has jurisdiction to review the IRS’s whistleblower claims award determinations where the informant has alleged that they provided significant information to the IRS before and after December 20, 2006, the effective date of section...