The Government Accountability Office recently reported that the IRS has made more than 500 awards totaling over $315 million to whistleblowers reporting tax cheats in claims paid since 2011.  And that’s not all — the IRS has 30,152 open claims, which could lead to the award of millions more to whistleblowers.

The IRS’s whistleblower law is designed to give an incentive to people to expose those who commit tax fraud or otherwise fail to pay their required federal taxes.

Michael Homans is a Labor & Employment attorney and founding partner of HomansPeck LLC. For more employment law updates, including news and links to important information pertaining to legal developments that may affect your business, subscribe to Michael’s blog, or follow him on Twitter @EmployLawUpdate.