Tax Court Allows Corporate Whistleblower to Remain Anonymous

December 9th, 2011 by JBWK

In a thorough opinion released last week, the U.S. Tax Court ruled that a corporate whistleblower may remain anonymous to protect his professional reputation.

The individual, a former corporate executive, alerted the IRS to potential tax fraud at his company. Although he has since left the company and joined another, he argued that disclosure of his identity would harm his professional standing and that he would be ostracized because of his whistleblower status.

The Tax Court decided to let him remain anonymous, even redacting the name of his attorney in the published opinion. So unless the company already has a suspicion (which it probably does), they may also never know who blew the whistle on it.

Comments are closed.