WASHINGTON, D.C. | May 25, 2022 — National Whistleblower Center is pleased to announce that an article authored by Executive Director, Siri Nelson, and Litigation Fellow, Ben Falstein, discussing a pending D.C. Circuit case was recently featured in Bloomberg Tax. The case, Lissack v. Commissioner, deals with the appropriate judicial standard of review for decisions made by the IRS Whistleblower Office.

The case has grave implications for the future of the IRS Whistleblower Program, which has been extremely successful in detecting and deterring tax code violations. The success of the program will be drastically undermined, however, if the D.C. Circuit upholds the ruling made by the United States Tax Court.

NWC joined the influential whistleblower firms or Zerbe, Miller, Fingeret, Frank & Jadav LLP and Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, LLP in filing this amicus brief urging the D.C. circuit to overturn the lower court’s decision.

In the recently published Bloomberg Tax article, Nelson and Falstein argue that applying the de novo standard for judicial oversight of the IRS Whistleblower Office is critical to ensure that meritorious whistleblowers will not be unjustly denied whistleblower awards and highlights the importance of NWC’s amicus and the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Lissack.

The article is available here. NWC Executive Director Siri Nelson is available for comment. For more information, contact NWC at info@whistleblowers.org.