Lost Opportunities: The Underuse of Tax Whistleblowers

Abstract

Legal literature on whistleblower programs often assumes an agency’s ability to effectively use a whistleblower tip. This article challenges that assumption in the context of tax enforcement by exposing the Internal Revenue Service’s under-performance. The article uses Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, taxpayer privacy law, as well as whistleblower and tax enforcement literature to propose a new approach to using information from tax whistleblowers.

Keywords: Tax, White collar crime, IRS Whistleblower Program, Whistleblower, 4th Amendment, Privacy