We are excited that, in December 2006, Congress dramatically increased the “rewards” to whistleblowers under the IRS Whistleblower rewards program. Whistleblowers now can receive up to 30% of the taxes, interest, and penalties that the IRS recovers based on information furnished by a whistleblower in large tax cases.

For years, the Internal Revenue Service has been authorized to pay informants reporting tax fraud a percentage of any back due taxes collected. Usually the maximum percentage was approximately fifteen (15%) percent of the back tax recovered.

The new whistleblower reform provisions passed by Congress have changed this maximum, and now allow the Internal Revenue Service to consider not only the back tax amount, but also interest and penalties. Given the amounts of money involved, and depending on the passage of time, the fines, penalties and interest in addition to the tax could be significant.

The Federal False Claims Act has been recognized as the government’s most effective tool for combating fraud and waste in government programs. According to the Justice Department, false claims act recoveries for the fiscal year 2006 exceeded 3 billion dollars. Unfortunately, the whistleblower reward program utilized by the Internal Revenue Service can hardly be characterized as being so successful. Since new IRS reward reform measures were enacted by Congress, we have been giving thought to the crucial question of whether the IRS will be successful in implementing its new informant reward program. Statistics available from the IRS are hardly encouraging.