Our whistleblower lawyer blog has followed closely the evolution of the new IRS Whistleblower Program, which celebrates its one-year anniversary on December 20, 2007. Late today, on the eve of that anniversary, the new IRS Whistleblower Office issued long-awaited interim “guidance” for filing Tax Whistleblower claims–which should help tax whistleblowers and their attorneys.
Until now, whistleblower lawyers and their clients had to learn the procedures from reports of various public statements and discussions with IRS officials. I had the pleasure of getting to know how the IRS Whistleblower Office’s Director Stephen Whitlock intends to approach these claims, through appearing on a panel discussion with him in September in Washington to explain how the new IRS Whistleblower Program operates.
This interim guidance appears in IRS Notice 2008-4, which will be reprinted on this whistleblower lawyer blog in the next post. The IRS is soliciting comments, and much discussion undoubtedly will follow, both on our whistleblower lawyer blog and elsewhere.
It is an exciting day to see the new Guidance from the IRS on this important new IRS Whistleblower Program! We look forward to discussing it in detail on this blog, but simply wanted to get the word out tonight about this IRS announcement received from the IRS shortly before 6:00 p.m. tonight.
IRS Notice 2008-4 on filing claims under the IRS Whistleblower Program is at https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-08-04.pdf, and is effective January 14, 2008.