Introduction
Since the inception of the IRS Whistleblower Program, $7.37 billion in proceeds have been collected with $1.3 billion in awards paid to whistleblowers. This makes it one of the most effective whistleblower programs available, not only to U.S. citizens, but to those outside of the U.S. as well. In fact, foreign whistleblowers represented roughly 4.2% of all whistleblowers filing claims in FY 2024 under the IRS whistleblower program.
If you’re a non-U.S. citizen and have inside knowledge of a taxpayer evading U.S. tax obligations, including offshore account holders, foreign financial institutions, or a multinational corporation, you may be entitled to an award between 15% and 30% of the amount in dispute under IRC §7623(b); or a potentially lesser award under §7623(a) discretionary if your case does not meet the §7623(b) thresholds.
Blowing the whistle is a multi-year process that takes patience and the right legal approach. Many find the process incredibly rewarding. In 2024, the IRS paid $123.5 million in awards — a 39% increase from the previous year at $88.8 million.
Although you do not legally need a U.S. based attorney to submit information to the IRS, you must be represented by an attorney if you wish to report anonymously. Continue reading to learn more about the process of reporting to the IRS as an international tax whistleblower and what you can expect.
Before You Begin: What You’ll Need
If you have information about tax non-compliance, keep it to yourself! There is a long history of whistleblowers telling their friends and colleagues only to be retaliated against. Blowing the whistle starts with a solid plan – you’ll need the following:
- Specific, credible information about a tax violation (not speculation)
- Documentation or the ability to describe where documentation exists
- Calculation of the approximate amount in dispute (to assess §7623(b) vs. §7623(a))
- U.S. counsel if you want to file anonymously or preserve award rights
- An ITIN or willingness to obtain one if you don’t have a U.S. tax ID
- Commitment to a 7-10+ year timeline
We suggest contacting a U.S. based attorney to help guide you through the process, especially if you’re unsure about any of the requirements above. An attorney can significantly increase your chances of filing a successful claim and potential award.
Step 1: Confirm Your Information Qualifies
The IRS pays awards for information regarding underpayment of tax, tax fraud, evasion of taxes, violations of the Internal Revenue Code, and other related tax non-compliance. The target taxpayer can be a U.S. citizen or resident anywhere in the world, a foreign entity with U.S. tax obligations, or a foreign financial institution subject to FATCA reporting.
In the international context, common international tax cases often include undisclosed foreign accounts in countries that have a culture of secrecy, such as Switzerland or the Cayman Islands.
Other cases include abusive offshore structures, FATCA violations by foreign financial institutions, and transfer pricing manipulation. Additional qualifying conduct includes underreporting international income, inflating business deductions, and any deliberate attempt to avoid or lessen tax liability.
It’s important to note that the IRS does not pursue cases or grant awards based on speculative or publicly available data. They require “original information,” which means specific and credible evidence drawn from your independent knowledge or analysis — not from public reports, prior IRS audits, or government investigations.
Importantly, this includes independent analysis of public data that reveals non-compliance the IRS has not identified on its own.
Certain individuals — including federal employees acting in their official duties and those bound by professional privilege — face restrictions on filing; discuss your situation with counsel if this may apply.
Before moving forward, you should be able to answer the following:
- Who is the taxpayer?
- What is the violation?
- How did you learn about it?
For additional background on qualifying cases, see our IRS Whistleblower Program FAQ for International Whistleblowers.
Step 2: Verify Your Case Meets the §7623(b) Threshold
When blowing the whistle to the IRS, there are two options based on the amounts in dispute.
The first option is §7623(a) discretionary, which has no threshold and pays awards up to 15% with a cap at $10 million. Discretionary means that the IRS has full decision of whether to pay and how much.
The second option is §7623(b), which makes awards between 15-30% mandatory, when the amount in dispute exceeds $2 million, including tax, penalties, interest, and additions. If the target is an individual, gross income must exceed $200,000 for at least one tax year at issue. Whistleblowers who participated in the underlying violation can still file, but their award may be reduced or denied depending on their role.
A key distinction between the two is that under §7623(a), if the IRS lowballs you or denies the award, you have no recourse. Under §7623(b), you can challenge the determination in U.S. Tax Court — and whistleblowers have won meaningful reversals there.
It’s important to note that you do NOT have to decide between these two when filing a claim. The IRS will determine whether it meets the §7623(b) threshold. If it doesn’t, then §7623(a) may be applied.
It’s often easier for international tax whistleblowers to meet the §7623(b) threshold due to the amount of non-compliance spanning multiple tax years, especially in cases involving offshore tax evasion or fraud.
Step 3: Retain U.S. Counsel Before You File
For non-U.S. citizens this is one of the most important steps a whistleblower can take. Legal counsel helps shape what evidence you gather and develops a strong legal strategy for how your information is presented to the IRS.
Beyond practical application, an international tax whistleblower attorney can protect your anonymity, preserve privilege, and manage direct communications with the IRS Whistleblower Office, keeping you updated on requests for information and next steps.
For international whistleblowers specifically, counsel is critical for:
- Navigating non-U.S. document laws
- Coordinating with home-country counsel on retaliation exposure
- Handling extradition or travel risk concerns
Hiring an expert whistleblower attorney also increases your chances of receiving the maximum award percentage possible, which becomes especially important if you need to challenge the determination in Tax Court.
In this area of law, a contingency fee structure is standard. What this means is that you as the whistleblower pay nothing unless your attorney wins your case. This aligns your attorney’s incentives with yours — both sides are motivated to secure the highest possible award.
IWA has deep precedent-setting expertise in international tax whistleblowing. IWA’s legal team, led by Stephen M. Kohn, represented Bradley Birkenfeld, the international banker and wealth manager at UBS Bank in Switzerland, who in 2007 blew the whistle on a massive tax evasion scheme under the IRS whistleblower program.
UBS was forced to pay a settlement of $780 million and turn over the names of over 4,450 U.S. taxpayers. Birkenfeld broke the back of Swiss bank secrecy and was awarded $104 million by the IRS, representing 26% of the $400 million in taxes returned.
Step 4: Gather and Preserve Evidence
The IRS is looking for original information, and the strength of your claim depends heavily on the evidence supporting it. The types of evidence that they’re looking for may include account statements, internal emails, organizational charts, transaction records, wire transfer documentation, or tax returns (if accessible lawfully) among other types.
Note on ‘accessible lawfully’:If you have not yet retained counsel, do not gather additional evidence beyond what is already in your possession. Once you’ve retained counsel, gather only under their direction.
As you document your evidence and preserve a clean timeline, including key dates, amounts, individuals involved. For international whistleblowers, it is critical to provide full translation of non-English documents to ensure proper information transfer not only for the IRS and claim, but also for your attorney – translated documents may also be required later.
Be Discreet and Secure
Never forward documents to personal email, save them to personal cloud storage, or photograph screens with a personal device. This creates a traceable trail that can expose your identity and compromise the integrity of the evidence.
Step 5: Prepare IRS Form 211
IRS Form 211, Application for Award for Original Information, is the official form used to submit a whistleblower claim under IRC § 7623.
The IRS now offers two ways to file: online through the IRS secure portal or by mail.
Whether filing online or by paper, the form itself is short. The IRS Whistleblower Office explicitly encourages whistleblowers to submit supporting attachments rather than trying to fit everything on the form.
A well-organized submission with a supporting memorandum of facts and exhibits is where your case is made.
At minimum, your submission should include:
- A description of the alleged tax noncompliance, with a written narrative explaining the issue
- Supporting information such as books, records, ledgers, transaction details, and the location of assets
- A description of any supporting evidence not in your possession and where it can be found
- An explanation of how and when you became aware of the information
- A description of your present or former relationship to the target taxpayer
- Your signature under penalty of perjury
For international whistleblowers, a few specifics matter. Form 211 requires a taxpayer identification number — either a Social Security Number (SSN) or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). If you don’t have either, your attorney can help you obtain an ITIN for award payment purposes.
Your U.S. counsel’s address can be used as the mailing address for IRS correspondence, and a Form 2848 Power of Attorney should be attached so your attorney can communicate directly with the Whistleblower Office on your behalf.
Importantly, a representative cannot sign Form 211 on your behalf. Even when counsel prepares the claim, the whistleblower’s own signature under penalty of perjury is required. The online submission portal accepts digital signatures, and for paper filing, the IRS accepts faxed or scanned signatures — wet ink is not required.
One final note: do not submit the same claim through both channels or file duplicates. The IRS has explicitly warned that duplicate submissions cause processing delays.If you have any questions, contact IWA IRS whistleblower attorneys for a free case evaluation.
Step 6: Submit Your Claim to the IRS Whistleblower Office
Once your Form 211 is received, the IRS Whistleblower Office will mail a confirmation letter with your claim number. Save this letter — you’ll need the claim number for any future correspondence with the office.
From there, your claim moves through several phases with rough timeline estimates:
Intake and Initial Review (30-90 days)
The Whistleblower Office screens your submission for basic eligibility and actionability. The most common reasons for rejection at this stage are:
- No actionable issue
- Incomplete Form 211
- Ineligible whistleblower
- Insufficient assessment statute remaining
- Assessment statute already expired
If your claim is rejected here, you’ll receive a rejection or denial letter explaining the basis.
Subject Matter Expert Evaluation (~90 days)
If your claim makes it through initial review, it’s forwarded to a subject matter expert (SME) who evaluates the substance of the information. The SME may contact you — or your counsel, if a Form 2848 is on file — to clarify details. For international tax cases, most claims are routed to the Large Business & International (LB&I) operating division.
Field Examination (1-3 years)
Once accepted, your claim is sent to the field for examination or investigation. This phase is long and — by design — largely silent. The Whistleblower Office will not tell you whether an audit has been opened, and IRC § 6103 tightly restricts what information can be shared with whistleblowers during an active investigation.
Status requests from international whistleblowers must be in writing. They must reference your claim number and are limited to one per calendar year.
Step 7: Protect Your Identity and Document Any Retaliation
The IRS whistleblower program takes great pride in protecting the identity of whistleblowers. The program is often described by whistleblower experts as one of the most secretive in federal law. The IRS does not disclose any information regarding cases, even when they’ve been settled. This is why so many of the IRS whistleblower cases that IWA attorneys have won contain very little information regarding the outcome — generally only award amounts are disclosed. If you become a witness, however, your identity may be disclosed in judicial proceedings.
When you blow the whistle, retaliation risk varies significantly by jurisdiction, and U.S. enforcement outside its borders is limited. For many international whistleblowers, the more immediate risk is home-country exposure. Some jurisdictions — Switzerland being the most prominent example — impose criminal penalties on citizens and employees who disclose client or banking information, even to foreign tax authorities.
Data protection laws like GDPR can also create civil or regulatory exposure for transmitting information across borders. This is why coordinating with both U.S. counsel and home-country counsel before any disclosure is critical.
If you do have a U.S. employer or U.S. nexus, the Taxpayer First Act of 2019 added anti-retaliation provisions at 26 U.S.C. § 7623(d), under which employers are prohibited from taking adverse actions against employees who report tax fraud or underpayments. Prohibited actions include discharging, demoting, suspending, threatening, harassing, or discriminating against whistleblowers. Complaints under § 7623(d) must be filed with OSHA within 180 days of the adverse action.
If you are a victim of retaliation, document every adverse action with dates, witnesses, and communications, and report each occurrence to counsel immediately.
Step 8: Cooperate with the IRS Whistleblower Office Through Examination
The IRS whistleblower program has been plagued with long delays and lengthy processing times. You should expect silence for long stretches — this is normal and not a bad sign.
During this time, you may be asked for additional information or clarification. But it is unlikely that you will be asked to testify. The longest silent stretches typically fall during the Field Examination phase (1-3 years) and the Monitoring for Payment phase, which can last up to the full 10-year collection statute.
Work with counsel to cooperate with the IRS. Your cooperation directly affects your award percentage. This ranges from 15% as the minimum, and 30% as the maximum based on your substantial contribution, among many other award factors that the IRS will use in evaluating award percentages.
Some of these include promptness of reporting, quality and specificity of information, cooperation with examiners, and whether the information identified issues the IRS hadn’t already found.
If you’d like to contact the IRS directly, do not contact the IRS examiners directly — all communication must go through counsel. And again, status requests must be in writing and can be done once per calendar year. Never attempt to contact the taxpayer being investigated! This is a huge risk and can potentially ruin your case.
Keep your contact information current with the Whistleblower Office (changes in address, especially for international whistleblowers, can delay award). But the best advice is to be patient and work with your attorney for the best outcomes possible.
Step 9: Monitor Your Claim Through Adjudication and Appeal
The IRS whistleblower process can be quite long. The case must move through various stages, including initial examination, appeals, collection of proceeds, and a final award determination. This can take between 7-10 years from filing to award payment, as the IRS cannot pay you until the proceeds are collected from the delinquent taxpayer.
Despite the timeline, the program’s financial results are significant. In FY 2024, the IRS paid $123.5 million in whistleblower awards based on $474.7 million in collected proceeds — the third-highest annual total in program history. The average award rate for § 7623(b) claims was 26.3%, the second-highest in program history and well above the program’s historical average of 17.7%.
The length of this process is an issue our attorneys and advocates are actively working to address in Washington, including through support for the bipartisan IRS Whistleblower Improvement Act. Based on FY 2024 data from the IRS Whistleblower Office Annual Report, § 7623(b) claim processing time breaks down into three phases:
- Whistleblower Office Claim Processing Time (~1.09 years): evaluating how your information contributed to the action, calculating the award, and conducting the administrative proceeding.
- Administrative/Judicial Action Processing Time: the examination or investigation itself, plus any appeals or litigation the target taxpayer pursues. This is the longest and most variable segment.
- Other Claim Processing Time: collection of proceeds, waiting for the refund statute to expire, and any Tax Court litigation by the whistleblower.
Once all regulatory requirements are met, the Whistleblower Office issued payment in an average of 48 days in FY 2024 — a 28% improvement over FY 2023. For overall workload context, the Whistleblower Office had 31,852 open claims as of September 30, 2024, across every processing phase.
For international whistleblowers, the program has a meaningful global footprint: in FY 2024, claims were filed by whistleblowers based in Europe (157), Asia (29), and Australia (3), alongside 4,352 from North America. “International/Offshore” also ranks as the eighth most common allegation category, confirming that cross-border tax non-compliance is a meaningful share of the program’s caseload.
Step 10: Receive Your Award and Report It Properly
If your case is successful and the IRS reaches a settlement with the non-compliant taxpayer, you will be entitled to an award of between 15% and 30% of the collected proceeds under §7623(b). The award percentage is determined by several factors, as we previously mentioned above, which include:
Factors that may increase your award:
- You acted promptly to inform the IRS after learning of the tax noncompliance
- Your information identified an issue, transaction, or taxpayer behavior the IRS was unlikely to detect on its own
- Your submission presented the facts in a clear, organized manner that saved the IRS time and resources
- You (or your counsel) provided exceptional cooperation throughout the case
- Your information identified taxpayer assets available to pay the resulting liability
- Your information connected parties or transactions in ways that helped the IRS understand the full scope of the noncompliance
Factors that may reduce your award:
- You delayed reporting after learning of the noncompliance, particularly if the delay affected the IRS’s ability to act
- You contributed to the underpayment or directly or indirectly profited from it (without rising to the “planned and initiated” level, which can cause full denial)
- You or your counsel disclosed the existence or scope of the IRS investigation
- You violated instructions from the IRS or the terms of any confidentiality agreement with the Whistleblower Office
- You provided false or misleading information
- You filed a claim based principally on public sources (judicial hearings, government reports, or the news media), which caps the award at 10% unless you were the original source
In limited circumstances, the Whistleblower Office may deny an award entirely — most commonly when the whistleblower planned and initiated the underlying violation, and always when the whistleblower is criminally convicted for their role in that violation.
Once your award is paid, a few practical points to keep in mind — especially for international whistleblowers:
- Payment: Awards are paid by the U.S. Treasury, typically by wire transfer, and can be sent to a non-U.S. account. Coordinate wire instructions with your counsel in advance.
- Taxes: Awards are taxable income in the United States and may also be taxable in your home country.
- Reporting: Awards paid into a non-U.S. account may trigger additional U.S. reporting obligations such as FBAR or FATCA.
Because every whistleblower’s financial and tax situation is different, you should consult a qualified tax professional in your country of residence to address how the award will be treated under your local law and any applicable tax treaties.
How Long the Process Realistically Takes
Most IRS whistleblower cases take 7-10 years from filing to award payment. The examination and collection phases typically represent the longest stretches, since the IRS cannot pay an award until proceeds have been fully collected from the target taxpayer.
A general timeline looks like this:
- Year 0: Filing
- Years 1-2: Initial review and case acceptance
- Years 2-5: Examination
- Years 4-7: Collection
- Years 7-10+: Award determination and payment
Patience is the defining trait of every successful whistleblower claim — and the reason retaining experienced counsel from the start matters. A strong legal team helps you stay informed, responsive, and positioned for the maximum award when proceeds are finally collected.
Common Mistakes International Whistleblowers Make
Even credible claims with strong evidence can be weakened or disqualified by avoidable mistakes. Some of the most common we see include:
- Filing pro se and losing the anonymity that counsel provides. Filing without U.S. counsel exposes your identity and removes the procedural protections that come with representation.
- Taking privileged or unauthorized documents. Accessing systems you aren’t authorized to use or removing privileged materials can compromise the claim and create personal legal exposure.
- Forwarding documents to personal email or devices. This creates a traceable trail that can expose your identity and compromise the integrity of the evidence.
- Discussing the claim with colleagues, family, or media. Any disclosure increases the risk of retaliation and can jeopardize both the investigation and your anonymity.
- Waiting too long to file. The IRS cannot pay awards on cases where the assessment statute of limitations has expired. Delays can make strong information worthless.
- Confusing the whistleblower program with voluntary disclosure programs. The IRS’s Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures are for taxpayers correcting their own non-compliance — not for whistleblowers reporting someone else. The two programs are fundamentally different and incompatible.
- Underestimating the timeline and giving up. Cases that take seven or more years to pay are normal. Whistleblowers who disengage during the silent stretches can weaken their own claim.
- Not coordinating with home-country counsel on retaliation risk. U.S. anti-retaliation protections have limited reach abroad, and some jurisdictions impose their own criminal penalties on disclosure. Coordination across borders is essential.
When to Contact a Whistleblower Attorney
If you believe you have information about U.S. tax non-compliance and are considering filing a claim, the most important thing you can do is talk to a whistleblower attorney before taking any other action.
Counsel should be involved before you gather additional evidence, before you respond to any internal investigation at your organization, and before you discuss the matter with colleagues, family, or anyone in the media. If you are already experiencing retaliation, contact counsel immediately.
At IWA, initial consultations are confidential and come at no cost. Our attorneys work on a contingency fee basis, meaning you pay nothing unless your case succeeds. If you are an international whistleblower with information about U.S. tax non-compliance, we would welcome the opportunity to discuss your situation.
