I’m experiencing the thrill of influencing national policy— something Law-and-Econ-Blogger Gamage is well acquainted with, since he worked on government health care regulations. It’s a modest thrill, though. The regulations for whistleblowers who provide information on tax underpayment for a reward have just been issued. The IRS is notoriously hostile to whistleblowers (Congress forced the program on them in 2006), but these regulations are an improvement over the transition period. Lots of law firms and lawyers submitted detailed public comments, as did I, on both practical and policy matters. I’ll use this post as a way to talk about the comment process in administrative law, as something I can have my undergraduates read when I teach them about regulation starting two weeks from now. I’ll just talk about one comment in this post, and maybe write a second post once I’ve read through the entire regulations and reminded myself of what my other comments were.
My thrill comes from definitely improving the regulation, even though the IRS didn’t do exactly what I suggested.