Whistleblower Office
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | February 2, 2007 |
| Jurisdiction | Federal government of the United States |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. at the Internal Revenue Service Building |
| Employees | 43 (2014) |
| Agency executive |
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| Parent agency | IRS |
| Website | www |
The IRS Whistleblower Office is a branch of the United States Internal Revenue Service that will "process tips received from individuals, who spot tax problems in their workplace, while conducting day-to-day personal business or anywhere else they may be encountered." Tipsters should use IRS Form 211 to make a claim.
The program has existed since the 1800s in various forms and is intended to uncover companies and individuals who are underpaying their taxes or otherwise committing tax fraud. To motivate people to notify the IRS of first-hand knowledge of tax-evasion schemes, the U.S. Congress directed the IRS to pay tipsters at least 15% and as much as 30% of taxes, penalties, and interest collected in cases where $2 million or more is at stake.
Section 406 of the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006 and Section 7623(b) of the Internal Revenue Code formally amended the IRS Whistleblower program. Under the amendments passed in 2006, a new set of rules and frameworks were established in order to evaluate informant submissions and to improve the efficiency of the program generally. The amended law also required the creation of the Whistleblower Office within 12 months. The Office lies within the IRS and is charged with administering the new framework and handling potential incoming whistleblower claims. President George W. Bush signed the act on December 20, 2006. U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, modeled the act creating the Office and its reward system after the False Claims Act, which allows people to file actions against federal contractors committing fraud against the US government. For fiscal year 2006, the Justice Department reported that over $3 billion was collected directly as a result of Whistleblower claims and resulting lawsuits.
While the Whistleblower Office has the power to assign investigation to other offices within the IRS, it mainly works jointly with other branches within the IRS to investigate claims. The changes to the program through the 2006 amendments were meant to encourage insiders to “blow the whistle on people who are not paying their taxes,” in order to close the tax gap and assist the IRS in collecting additional tax revenue. As part of the amendments, Congress created an office within the IRS to handle claims under the IRS Whistleblower program. Part of that act requires the Secretary of the Treasury to conduct annual studies explaining the way in which Section 7623 is used and the results under the program. According to this data, the IRS was able to recover almost $1.2 billion through the program between 2006 and 2010.This increase in collection is credited to the changes in the program from the 2006 amendments. Fiscal year 2011 marked the first payments from the 2006 Amendments and “most of the awards paid during [fiscal year] 2014 resulted from claims under the prior law.”
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Wikipedia