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Loading bill breakdown…
Sponsored by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) · 5 active : 4 Republicans, 1 Democrat
Latest action: Received in the Senate and Read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance.
IRS Whistleblower Program Improvement Act
This bill modifies provisions of the Internal Revenue Code relating to whistleblower awards and protections.
Specifically, the bill
revises the standard for review of whistleblower awards in the Tax Court to require a
de novo
review (rather than the current abuse of discretion review) based on the administrative record established at the time of the whistleblower award determination and any new or previously unavailable evidence,
allows whistleblowers anonymity in proceedings before the Tax Court (unless a societal interest in disclosing a whistleblower's identity outweighs potential harm to the whistleblower),
modifies the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblower report to require inclusion of a list and description of up to 10 of the top tax avoidance schemes disclosed by whistleblowers, and
requires payment of interest on mandatory whistleblower awards if the IRS fails to provide timely notice to a whistleblower of an award recommendation.
The bill also allows payments of the attorney fees of whistleblowers to be deducted when calculating adjusted gross income for tax purposes regardless of whether the whistleblower award was paid through the mandatory or the discretionary whistleblower award program. (Under current law, the deduction is limited to attorney fees paid in connection with mandatory awards.)
Each member’s recorded vote compared with their swing projection from before the vote. A member by voting against most of their own party.
| BandBand before the vote | VotedVoted yea or nay | BrokeBroke with party | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Swing | 27 | 0 | 0% |
| Middle | 202 | 9 | 4% |
| Entrenched | 127 | 1 | 1% |
| All |
Members fall into . 2 representatives don’t have enough data yet and are marked “insufficient data”. Non-voting delegates are not counted. The bill is not before the House right now; these scores show where members would stand.
Bars show each input from 0 to 100: ideology gap, scorecard gap, . is the seat’s partisan lean, and shows how much of the input data a score has. Where the House has voted, each member’s appears with the projection made before it.
Loading similar votes
| 356 |
| 10 |
| 3% |
: Pair any member who broke with one who stayed with their party: in 71% of those pairs, the one who broke had the higher swing score before the vote. Chance would be 50%.
Projections from swing-v2, computed with data from before the vote. Present and not voting never count as breaking.
These members have less than half of the model’s inputs, so their scores are not banded or ranked.
Ringed dots broke with their party on the vote.
Ideology is each member’s score. The cluster low on the chart includes the bill’s 6 sponsor and cosponsors in the House: they have already committed, so they score as entrenched. 2 representatives without a DW-NOMINATE score or with insufficient data are not plotted.
Similar votes count toward swing-v3 in the House: total similarity weight 7.0 (needs 5.0).
