August 8, 2018

IRS Awards the First Whistleblower Payment

Editor’s note: Thanks to the False Claims Act, IRS-related fraud is being reported and exposed more than ever due to the brave efforts of whistleblowers – who then get rewarded for their actions. This older blog post is from our Qui Tam archives and is worth viewing and reading again.

More than four years after the Internal Revenue Service implemented a whistleblower program, it issued its first award. On April 18, 2011, the IRS awarded $4.5 million to an accountant for reporting tax fraud. The whistleblower discovered that his employer, a Fortune 500 financial services firm, had over $20 million in tax liability. The accountant went to the IRS with the information after the firm refused to report this liability to the IRS.

As noted in an earlier post, the rewards for tax fraud whistleblowers range from 15% to 30% of the taxes, penalties, and interests collected by the IRS in the case if more than $2 million is at issue in the case and the IRS actually uses the information provided by the whistleblower.

Considering a whistleblower action yourself? Perhaps you have a friend or relative who is considering this process due to the knowledge they have at their workplace? B&A can be of assistance. Check-out our Qui Tam Results page and learn of the many successful legal cases we have won on behalf of whistleblowers nationally, here.