Last Fall, and again in March 2009, whistleblower lawyer blog co-author Michael A. Sullivan had the pleasure of sitting down with IRS Whistleblower Office Director Steve Whitlock, for an in-depth interview on the "best practices" for lawyers in pursuing IRS Whistleblower claims for their whistleblower clients.
The interview has just been published in the April 2009 False Claims Act & Qui Tam Quarterly Review. It includes some of the important points made by Director Whitlock at the IRS Whistleblower Boot Camp sponsored by Taxpayers Against Fraud in March, 2009, about which we have written previously.
The interview covers the progress of the IRS Whistleblower Office since it was established in early 2007, how the IRS process differs from pursuing qui tam cases under the False Claims Act, and the “best practices” for attorneys who pursue IRS Whistleblower claims.
We appreciate how generous Mr. Whitlock has been with his time in helping educate lawyers who wish to bring IRS Whistleblowers claims, which was the reason for the IRS Whistleblower Boot Camp in March.
IRS Whistleblower Office Director Steve Whitlock (right) participates in a panel discussion moderated by Whistleblower Lawyer Blog Co-Author Michael A. Sullivan (left) at the IRS Whistleblower Boot Camp.
Some excerpts from the interview are below (more will follow later), and the entire interview should be available through Taxpayers Against Fraud on a subscription basis:
Michael Sullivan: Steve Whitlock, thank you for agreeing to speak with me for the TAF Quarterly to discuss the “Best Practices for Lawyers in Pursuing IRS Whistleblower Claims.”
. . . For lawyers screening cases, are there particular types of cases that the IRS is interested in, or particular industries that are more attractive to the IRS?
Steve Whitlock: The IRS puts out an annual plan and has a strategic plan that reaches out five years, which is posted on www.irs.gov. We describe our enforcement priorities. We try to touch a little bit of everything in different ways because the tax system is that complex. We try to have some presence in every aspect of the tax law.
The largest corporations tend to be under audit nearly continuously. Issues on international tax noncompliance are getting more attention in recent years because of globalization of the economy. There have been some congressional hearings recently about those kinds of questions where large corporations –multinationals–have the ability to take advantage of the tax code and their business structure to reduce their tax liability. Sometimes that is permitted by the tax code, and sometimes it is not. That is an area of focus—to identify those areas where it is not permitted, but somebody is pushing the envelope.
Someone who is not filing and paying—that is always of interest to us. High-income non-filers are especially interesting to us. Define “high income” how you want to, but we generally look at six figures, $200,000, $250,000 in gross income.
We have concerns in the areas of “trust funds,” where a taxpayer is an employer and is withholding from their employees, in order to cover the employees’ personal tax liability. When you have someone who is acting in effect as a trustee for the federal government by withholding tax from employee wages, but then says “You know, I’m having a little trouble with the business. I’m going to pay my bills before I pay the tax bill.” That’s an area that has been an enforcement priority for many years.
We have a whole series of abusive transactions that are identified in our enforcement
priorities. CI, on their part of the website, will identify the “Dirty Dozen.” Some of those are at the retail level, and some of them are not. Some of them involve fairly sophisticated schemes. So, the Service is interested in a lot of different areas.
Fundamentally if there is serious tax noncompliance, if there’s evidence that there is real money involved in it, the Service is going to be interested. If it is below the $2 million threshold in the statute, we still have the backup of the pre-amendment rule, subsection (a) of the statute. We still pay, we still accept, we still process those claims.
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