How to pay for health care in the United States, as costs inexorably grow?
The IRS Whistleblower Program may help by narrowing the “tax gap”–the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid each year. Treasury’s latest estimate is that $345 billion owed remains uncollected from those who engage in tax fraud, tax evasion, and other tax noncompliance. (“Update on Reducing the Federal Tax Gap and Improving Voluntary Compliance”).
Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus, D-Mont., raised this tax gap with the next IRS Chief Counsel, William J. Wilkins, on July 14: “We’re right now trying to figure how to pay for healthcare reform,” Baucus told Wilkins. “And it’s ironic that coincidentally, the amount we are trying to raise is that amount.”
The new IRS Whistleblower Program should dramatically improve the IRS’s efforts to close that tax gap. In December 2006, Congress authorized rewards of 15-30% paid to IRS whistleblowers who provide information that assists the IRS in collecting amounts owed to the IRS.
For the first time, IRS whistleblowers have an enforceable “right” to receive a reward. Early indications from the clients who have contacted us are that many substantial claims are being presented, including claims of over $1 billion owed to the IRS. (To see how the IRS Whistleblower Program works, see excerpts of this interview with IRS Whistleblower Office Director Steve Whitlock.)
Even the SEC is examining the success to date of the IRS program, in determining how the SEC might encourage and reward whistleblowers who come forward to reveal the next Madoff or Stanford.
Whistleblowers with solid information will help close the tax gap, and avoid imposing new taxes on the rest of the law-abiding Americans who pay their taxes.
Ever since the start of the new IRS Whistleblower Program, our whistleblower lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP have represented whistleblowers in the new program. We have represented clients with IRS Whistleblower claims in the hedge fund industry, other financial services industries, real estate, manufacturing, and many other businesses, as tax fraud, tax evasion, and other tax noncompliance are not limited to one field.
Since the late 1980s, our attorneys also have worked with the nation’s other major whistleblower law, the False Claims Act. We have represented whistleblowers who reported fraud and false claims in many government programs, including contractor fraud in Iraq reconstruction, other military contracts, NASA programs, Hurricane Katrina and other disaster relief, and of course Medicare/Medicaid fraud.
For a free consultation about a possible whistleblower claim, please call us at 800-228-9159, or email us HERE.