In our experience the IRS is a peculiarly apolitical organization – despite the Lerner email scandal and the targeting of conservative groups for noncompliant tax exempt status claims, almost every position in the IRS is not motivated by or responsive to political considerations – but when we have a change of administration it means we have a new political people in the top tier at the Treasury Department, which runs the IRS. Yesterday the new administration’s appointee as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was confirmed by the Senate, so the question you may all be asking is: as current or prospective whistleblowers, what does that mean to us?
Senator Grassley had the opportunity to question the nominee about his thoughts on the Program, and here is what he just said about Mnuchin:
As the author of the provisions improving the incentives for whistleblowers to come forward about large dollar tax fraud, I was glad to receive a commitment from Mr. Mnuchin in support of a strong IRS whistleblower function. Whistleblowers have helped the IRS recover $3.4 billion that otherwise would have been lost to fraud. Cracking down on big dollar tax fraud is a matter of fairness to the vast majority of taxpayers who pay what they owe. The IRS has made progress in working with whistleblowers, but there’s more work to be done.
Previously Grassley said this about the nominee after his Finance Committee nomination hearing: “Mr. Mnuchin gave his assurance that he’ll work with me if confirmed to support tax fraud whistleblowers.” It is a positive sign to whistleblowers that we have such a show of commitment by the incoming administration. This statute isn’t going to be eliminated, and if anything whistleblowers can expect to see the statute strengthened in the coming years with cooperation by Treasury leadership.
“Support” from the new administration has to be tangible and results oriented to have any meaning. Words are not enough. For starters, the leaders at Treasury needs to work with and instruct their attorneys in the office of Chief Counsel to not take legal positions which damage the legitimacy of the Program. For example, not resisting whistleblowers discovery requests for information from the taxpayer’s administrative file which would show how their information was used beyond what happened to the in the Whistleblower Office’s file; not limiting collected proceeds to be only those monies collected under Title 26 despite rulings by the Tax Court opinions to the contrary; and reconsidering sequestration on awards. Most importantly the new Treasury leadership should through proper channels instruct IRS operational personnel take a long hard look at allegations of tax underpayments and fraud reported by whistleblowers and treat these losses to the government as the serious threat that they are. Such claims of large scale malfeasance should not to be taken lightly and dismissed without proper due diligence. Just because there is a serious limitation on resources at the IRS it does not mean that it is smart or proper to do less with whistleblower claims, to the contrary the data showing the higher return on agent time used in whistleblower cases suggests that the IRS should spend more time prosecuting whistleblower claims because they are one of the most efficient ways to use those precious resources. Finally, “support” by the new administration is best shown by one thing: putting their money where their mouth is by timely paying awards to whistleblowers.
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