The IRS recently released its annual report to Congress on the Whistleblower Program, which awarded over $312 million to whistleblowers and collected $1.4 billion in FY 2018. Awards in this period represent 21.7% of total proceeds collected based on whistleblower claims, a significant increase of nearly 4 percentage points as compared to FY 2017. The IRS generally waits at least 8 years before issuing awards to ensure a final determination of proceeds can be made first.
The report also highlighted “issues of interest” such as how to provide stronger protection for taxpayer information and whistleblowers during the disclosure process. The Whistleblower Program plans to seek out efficiencies in addressing duplicative claims submitted by the same party and claims based entirely on publicly available information, however, it is committed to processing and responding to every claim submitted. In FY 2018, the program received over 12,200 claims, closed out over 12,800 claims, and has over 29,000 claims still open.
To read the annual report, click here [PDF].
