A whistleblower program at the Internal Revenue Service that pays tipsters a portion of the money they help recover saw a slump in payouts last year.
The IRS Whistleblower Officer, according to the agency’s fiscal 2021 report, made 179 awards to whistleblowers worth more than $36 million. Whistleblower tips helped the agency collect more than $245 million that same year.
The amount the IRS awarded to whistleblowers last year is nearly half the approximately $70 million whistleblowers have received over the program’s 15-year history, on average.
Fiscal 2021 is the office’s lowest year for whistleblower awards since fiscal 2017, when it awarded $33.9 million to whistleblowers.
The IRS Whistleblower Office made its biggest payout to whistleblowers in fiscal 2018, when it awarded more than $312 million. Those whistleblower tips helped the IRS collect more than $1.4 billion in proceeds from non-compliant taxpayers.
The report’s findings underwhelmed whistleblower advocacy experts, who are calling on Congress to strengthen the program through bipartisan legislation.
Since 2007, the IRS Whistleblower Office has paid out more than 2,500 awards to whistleblowers totaling over $1.05 billion. Whistleblower tips to this office have helped IRS to recover $6.39 billion from non-compliant taxpayers.
The Whistleblower Office staff last year had 41 full-time employees, with decades
of experience in a broad array of IRS compliance programs. The IRS also notes that the office went through a...
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