The IRS Whistleblower Office, as we know it, was set in motion by legislation written by Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa back in 2006. Slow motion that is. And Chuck is not happy.
Senator Grassley recently penned a stern letter to the Commish and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner asking them to kindly fix whatever is broken at Whistleblower headquarters. It’s the same story: they are taking too long to process these cases, and whistleblowers are patient, but they begin to lose faith in the system as the months and years pass on their claims without compensation. If they don’t straighten things out over there, the IRS is going to miss out on a big opportunity to collect the tax debt of some of the biggest tax cheats in the country. Whistleblowers will just stop coming forward.
According to reports, Grassley’s letter may have been prompted by recent intel that the director of the whistleblower program had spent time as a panelist at the Offshore Alert Conference — an errand seemingly outside the scope of his duties. He can’t be abandoning his post for gigs like this given the current backlog of cases! Of course, it probably doesn’t help his case knowing that the conference was held at the Ritz Carlton in Miami Beach!