(305) 363-1735

New York Tax Cheats Beware

Legal and Financial Advisor

If you know of a business cheating on their taxes New York has a whistleblower provision that enables you to blow the whistle on it so you should speak with a whistleblower lawyer, Rochester, NY that people trust.  New York’s whistleblower laws allow an insider to turn in tax cheats and receive a whistleblower award up to 30% of the amount recovered for the government.

Most Qui tam, or whistleblowers lawsuits are filed under the False Claims Act (FCA) and  enable the government to retrieve funds renting when they’re defrauded. Generally employees who work at a company that is engaged in healthcare fraud, like Medicare Fraud or Medicaid Fraud and in various illegal schemes like billing for services not rendered, upcoding, lying about provider based status or more. Once aware of the medicare fraud scheme, there is a way to commence a secret lawsuit against the employer with the use of whistleblower counsel. New York has enabled its own False Claims Act showing  how tax-related whistleblower lawsuits can be beneficial for the state government and to the whistleblower.

New York Tax Fraud Whistleblower Cases

New York has a creative mechanism to try and combat tax cheats through its whistleblower statutes.  The New York Tax Whistleblower provisions allow an individual to file a case under seal to expose entities that are cheating on their state taxes.  There are many schemes companies use to cheat on their taxes such as hiring people off the books to avoid payroll taxes, collective sales tax and not paying it to the state, claiming false deductions, or just outright underreporting or not reporting income.

In 2010  The False Claims Act laws in New York State empowered citizens to come forward with information regarding tax cheats allows the whistleblower to receive up to 30% of what the state recovers.  Already, there have been over $56 million in recoveries, which is roughly $15 million dollars paid out to tax fraud whistleblowers. It’s a win/win/win for everyone but the tax cheat. The taxpayers retrieve their money back, the state doesn’t have to raise taxes hopefully if tax fraud is routed out and the whistleblower is compensated for doing the right thing.

Conclusion

Fraud hurts everyone.  When people and companies evade taxes and cheat the government, people know it’s going on, but don’t know what to do to combat it.  With the IRS its more challenging, since they’ll only take cases with over $2 million dollars of provable fraud when the case is perfectly teed up for them.  In New York though, the state laws allow private individuals to actually commence an action against a tax cheat under the whistleblower provisions to hopefully recoup for the taxpayer more than what was cheated.  New Yorkers State can file qui tam cases under their False Claims Act, which then allows a successful whistleblower an award for a recovery. Speak with an experienced whistleblower lawyer Rochester, NY relies on to see if you qualify as a New York tax whistleblower.