Recently we discussed snitching on tax cheats in the UK and we speculated that tax rats Stateside would be less common because of the increasing trend of hating (or just plain killing) on the Federal Government.
Well, we were dead wrong. Since Congress passed the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, the payouts to whistleblowers increased from a maximum of 15% of the recovered proceeds to a maximum of 30%. So far the temptation is working as tips to the IRS have increased to 476 for the latest fiscal year (9/30) compared to just 116 in the previous year.
Continued, after the jump
The catch is that the IRS doesn’t want to hear about your elderly neighbor that’s running numbers out of their basement for extra cash. No, they want the serious scofflaws, according to the Tax Girl, “the tax, penalties, interest, additions to tax, and additional amounts in dispute must exceed $2 million for any taxable year (that’s the sother restrictions also apply).”
So if you crunch the numbers, you can see there’s plenty of motivation to flip on someone if you know they are a tax dodger. Problem so far is that because of the boring arcane nature of tax law and the swiftness of the American court system, not one payout has occurred to date.
Plus, the law isn’t exactly encouraging the most honest of folks to come forward when you consider that Joe Francis’s accountant ratted him out only to be accused of shenanigans himself. And as Joe Kristan points out, “…there is always something creepy about the IRS being able to horn in on confidential client-professional relationships…”
The IRS probably isn’t worried too much about who gives them the information, just as long as they get it, so they’ll probably make a run at this with an imperfect system and with sources of questionable motivation for the time being.
If You Pay Them, They Will Come [Tax Girl]
Informant Program Spurs IRS Whistleblower Tips [Web CPA]
30 Pieces of Silver or 30 Percent of the Gross [Roth & Company, Tax Update Blog]
It’s probably safe to say that billionaire hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman doesn’t get poor service very often. As the founder of Omega Advisors and 
Speaking to a crowd of real estate professionals in his hometown, Cantor said the tax would be considered as part of the larger tax reform discussion. But he suggested a change is probably not in the cards. “Honestly, there’s not a lot of support for getting rid of the mortgage deduction on Capitol Hill,” Cantor said to loud applause from the audience. Cantor was speaking to nearly 200 members of the Richmond Association of REALTORs. [