Attorney-at-Law

WINDS OF CHANGE AT OGDEN?

In Uncategorized on 05/08/2025 at 11:45

A DC lobbying group, which routinely bombards me with money requests, calls itself the National Whistleblower Center. It seems to have acted in one matter I blogged, although I thought at the time its efforts were counterproductive, due to its misunderstanding of the Section 7623 process and its misuse by the cottage industry public info sweepers. See my blogpost “A. Nonymous, Serial Blower – Anonymous,” 7/31/19.

Anyway, since March there’s apparently legislation proposed to make things better. Here’s their screed.

“The IRS has admitted a staggering statistic: Whistleblowers who report wealthy tax cheats wait, on average, 10 years to receive awards. These unacceptable delays affect whistleblowers and the average taxpayer, as tax evaders continue to exploit the system. This is just one of several issues with the IRS Whistleblower Program.

“Since its inception, the program has recovered over $6 billion from tax evaders. Without urgent reform, brave whistleblowers are left unprotected, and the integrity of our tax system is at risk.

“Now is the time to act.

“Senators Mike Crapo and Ron Wyden have released a bipartisan discussion draft of the Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act, which aims to fix longstanding problems with the IRS Whistleblower Program. This long-overdue legislation offers reasonable solutions to the flaws in the IRS Whistleblower Program.”

I suppose my ultra-sophisticated readers are already clued-in, but anyone else can weigh in.

  1. On March 25, 2026, the House Ways and Means Committee unanimously passed the IRS Whistleblower Program Improvement Act (H.R. 7959) with a 41-0 vote.

    • Current Law: Section 7623(b)(4) simply states that any award determination “may, within 30 days of such determination, be appealed to the Tax Court”. In practice, this has often restricted the Tax Court to reviewing only the administrative record compiled by the IRS.
    • The Change: H.R. 7959 changes the statutory language from “appealed to” to “reviewed by” the Tax Court. More importantly, it mandates that the Tax Court’s review “shall be de novo and shall be based on the administrative record established at the time of the original determination and any additional newly discovered or previously unavailable evidence”. This provides a significantly more favorable standard of review, guaranteeing that practitioners can introduce new, critical evidence that was previously unavailable during the administrative phase.

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