Whistle A Happy Tune

When it comes to made-up days of national celebration, they can certainly range from humorous to mind boggling. On the one hand, this blog s coming out on National Raspberries N’ Cream Day (ooh, yummy). On the other hand, this is coming out on National Sea Serpent Day (ew, yuck). No matter how we feel about them personally, though, they exist because someone somewhere wants people to notice something.

The IRS jumped in on this last week by getting behind National Whistleblower Day on July 30. And when you break down some numbers, it does show itself as something the agency would like to note.

First, I definitely wish I could be a whistleblower myself as since giving out its first award in 2007, the IRS has paid over $1.2 BILLION in awards for those who have helped collect about $7 billion from non-compliant taxpayers. Next, I had to break down percentages and start to wonder if the whistleblowers weren’t getting a little more than seemed right. But hey, this has resulted in a net of about $5 billion recovered, and that had to help someone’s budget in the government.

“The IRS appreciates the valuable contributions that thousands of whistleblowers have made to help bolster the fair and effective enforcement of our nation’s tax laws,” IRS Whistleblower Office Director John Hinman said. “Information from whistleblowers continues to be an incredibly effective aid to IRS compliance efforts, and we are committed to improving our whistleblower program by increasing our capacity to use high-value whistleblower information effectively, awarding whistleblowers fairly and as soon as possible, and keeping whistleblowers informed of their claim’s status and the basis for IRS decisions on claims.”

In the end, if it only costs a percentage of what is recovered to collect unpaid taxes, then it seems like a project that works. This is even if whistleblowers earn between 15-30% of what is recovered, which sounds like a pretty good payday. I also can’t help but wonder, though, if there are a number of whistleblower complaints that turn out to be insubstantial and waste a lot of time and resources.

Now is this something that is so wonderful that we should have a day to celebrate it? It’s probably a little more complicated than that, to be fair.  But I do believe that it’s at least a situation that could use a little more thinking about, so let’s just call today National Think About It Day.

Warmly,

Josh Bousquet
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