On October 4, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig outlining his priorities for the increased funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) offered by the Inflation Reduction Act.
Among his list of priorities, Wyden notes that “the IRS should develop a more robust whistleblower program. Whistleblowers have delivered a huge return on investment and can serve as effective partners for the federal government to unpack sophisticated schemes used by wealthy taxpayers and large corporations.”
Modernized in 2006, the IRS Whistleblower Program offers monetary awards and anti-retaliation protections to whistleblowers reporting large-scale tax fraud. Since 2007, the IRS has awarded whistleblowers over $1 billion based on the collection of over $6 billion in back taxes, interest, penalties, and criminal fines and sanctions.
However, the program has recently been plagued by a number of issues, including massive delays in the issuance of awards. The program’s 2021 Annual Report to Congress disclosed that the annual total of money recovered by the IRS Whistleblower Program fell from $1.44 billion in Fiscal Year 2018 to just $245 million in Fiscal Year 2021. Correspondingly, the total amount of money awarded to whistleblowers by the IRS fell from $312 million to $36 million over those same years.
Siri Nelson, the Executive Director of the National Whistleblower Center,...
You are reading the second issue of the Disinformation Monitor. It is published on a monthly basis and provides an overview of developments on the disinformation scenes on NATO’s eastern frontier....