Tax Court Protects Identity of Whistleblowers
Judge Kroupa of the U.S. Tax Court issued three memorandum opinions on Tuesday concerning whether or not the whistleblowers in those cases could proceed anonymously under Rule 345(a). All three memorandum opinions, T.C. Memo 2014-92, T.C. Memo 2014-93, and T.C....
Use of whistleblower information in tracking down unreported offshore accounts acknowledged by DOJ.
Kathryn Keneally, Assistant Attorney General, Tax Division of the Department of Justice, acknowledged that the Department of Justice had used information provided by whistleblowers in tracking down unreported offshore bank accounts held by United States citizens while...
SOX Protections Expanding for Whistleblowers
There seems to be a trend of interpreting SOX in a way that extends the whistleblower protections to a widening circle of persons. Most recently, a judge in Eastern District of Pennsylvania had allowed a retaliation lawsuit under SOX against non-publicly traded...
IRS Whistleblower Office Releases its Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2013
The IRS Whistleblower Office has released its Annual Report to Congress for Fiscal Year 2013. We had a good year with the IRS Whistleblower Program because they paid one of our clients a $38 million award, but overall the report certainly shows that there is a...
IRS Releases New Form 211
The IRS just completely revised the Application for Reward for Original Information, better known to us as Form 211. The procedures for filing the Form 211 have changed as well. The revised and significantly expanded Form 211, attached at the bottom of...
United States Supreme Court holds that whistleblower protections under Sarbanes-Oxley apply to employees of contractors of publicly held corporations
The United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in Lawson v. FMR LLC on March 4, 2014. This case looked at whether the whistleblower protection provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley, found at 18 U.S.C. § 1514A, protect the employees of a privately held contractor...
Study Finds Many Big Companies Pay Zero Tax
Citizens for Tax Justice just published a thought provoking five-year tax study of U.S. multinationals, as covered in an article today by Thomas Reuters journalists Kevin Drawbaugh and Patrick Temple-West. The study, which sampled 288 Fortune 500 companies,...
Schedule UTP Casts Wider Net in 2012 – Catches Less Fish
On February 4th, the IRS released statistics on the filings of Uncertain Tax Position Statements (Schedule UTP) for the 2012 tax year. The statistics show there were 1,743 Schedule UTP filers and 4,166 uncertain tax positions reported for the 2012 tax...
Exhibit IBM: Using Tax Havens to Manage Corporate Earnings
Bloomberg reporters Alex Barinka and Jesse Drucker just wrote an interesting article about how one large multinational is using its tax haven structures, which are typically put in place to supercharge foreign earnings by moving them to low tax jurisdictions through...
Director Whitlock Gives Preview of Fiscal 2013 Annual Report
Director Whitlock spoke along with Christopher Ehrman, the Director of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s whistleblower program, and Sean McKessy, the Director of the Security and Exchange Commission’s whistleblower program, at a webinar put...
Opportunities for Foreign Tax Whistleblowing Open Up in Canada
Last week the Canada Revenue Agency ("CRA") formally announced a whistleblower program for reporting Canadian tax fraud. Our contacts in Canada have told us that this measure has been in the works for a long time. For now the details remain a little thin,...
Uncertain Tax Positions Even Better For IRS Whistleblowers
Today’s CFO Journal reported that a warning from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (“PCAOB”) late last year has resulted in much more stringent external audits being conducted by auditors of public companies. PCAOB has been...
Whistleblowers Still Needed to End Bank Secrecy Protection for Tax Evaders
Last week a Swiss Federal Administrative Court rejected a U.S. government request for banking data on U.S. clients of Swiss bank Julius Baer. This ruling related to a group request for U.S. taxpayers with undisclosed accounts filed on a no-name basis. ...
IRS Commissioner Nominee Acknowledges Value of IRS Whistleblower Office
John Koskinen, President Obama's nominee for Commissioner of the IRS, testified today before the Senate Finance Commitee at a hearing on his nomination. As part of his testimony, Koskinen laid out his plans to "make the IRS the most effective, well-run, and...
As IRS and the Department of Justice attempt to do more with less, whistleblowers could be the key to continuing to combat tax shelters.
Tax shelters are an on-going battle for the IRS and the Department of Justice with large amounts of money at stake for the government, the taxpayer, and possibly for a knowledgeable whistleblower. Tax shelter cases involve schemes that attempt to manipulate...
Some Large Companies Pay No taxes… And One Sharp Economist gets a Shout Out
Kudos to Martin Sullivan, Chief Economist and Contributing Editor at Tax Analysts who had a nice piece in the Washington Post published about him over the weekend. I’ve always admired Marty’s ability to cut through the political BS and revenue...
United States Supreme Court denies certiorari of IRS whistleblower case.
On October 15, 2013, the United States Supreme Court issued an order denying certiorari of O’Donnell v. Commissioner, a case where summary judgment was granted by the Tax Court, and affirmed on appeal, because the information provided did not cause the IRS to...
The Ferraro Law Firm recent office moves.
In case you haven’t checked out our firm’s tax or main websites lately you may not be aware that we’ve moved into new offices in both Washington DC and in Miami FL. We are pleased to announce that we have relocated both offices to the...
Whistleblower Office Announces New Sequestration Rate as Washington Prepares for Government Shutdown.
The IRS Whistleblower Office renewed its position that awards under section 7623 are subject to the automatic sequester cuts, on its website, stating that: Pursuant to the requirements of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, as amended,...
Senator Grassley Asks Top IRS Commissioner Nominee to Embrace Whistleblower Program
Last week Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote a letter to John Koskinen, former chairman of Freddie Mac, congratulating him on his nomination as the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. After congratulations were out of the way, Senator Grassley got...