Businesswoman holding financial reward for whistle blower claim to the IRSBlowing the whistle on a tax-payer that has failed to pay taxes that they owe could be a cause for huge financial gain. Due to the large number of budget cuts within the IRS, the number of audits that the IRS can conduct has been greatly reduced. As a result of this, the Internal Revenue Service is depending more and more on informant claims.

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 has expanded the definition for whistleblower informant awards. question. If the credible information from the informant is used in any way to collect taxes, penalties, interest or other quantities, the IRS may pay an award. The IRS has the ability to pay a substantial award of varying degrees depending on the amount of unpaid taxes in question. If the unpaid tax amount exceeds $2 million, and some other stipulations are met, the IRS will pay a percent of the amount acquired from the tax-payer or business in question. According to Internal Revenue Code 7623, there is technically no limit on how much the IRS can award to an informant if there information proves beneficial. Generally speaking though, the IRS will pay 15 to 30 percent of the amount collected.

There are some other qualifications that must be met: if the case concerns an individual, his or her gross income per year has to be greater than $200,000. There is a second award program for whistleblowers reporting on disputes of less than $2 million dollars and or cases of individual taxpayers with annual gross incomes of less than $200,000. The award for these cases is, of course, smaller, with a greatest possible award being 15 percent of the funds collected, up to $10 million.

At the end of the day, if you help the IRS out in this way by simply telling the truth about what you know, the odds of winning the reward are way higher than the odds of winning the lottery. Read more…

Learn more about the author, Vivian Hoard