IRS LB&I "Campaigns" to Focus on OVDP Declines-Withdrawals, Among Other Issues (2/1/17)

The IRS has announced that LB&I "is taking a new approach to tax compliance, with a series of 13 campaigns aimed at cracking down on tax evasion."  Michael Cohn, IRS rolls out new compliance campaigns for large businesses and international taxpayers (AccountingToday 1/31/17), here.  The campaigns are directed to several issues of tax compliance that the IRS will focus on.  The article lists them all, but the one particularly relevant to the subjects previously covered on Federal Tax Crimes Blog is:

• OVDP Declines-Withdrawals Campaign 

The Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program allows U.S. taxpayers to voluntarily resolve past non-compliance related to unreported offshore income and failure to file foreign information returns. The campaign addresses OVDP applicants who applied for pre-clearance into the program but were either denied access to OVDP or withdrew from the program of their own accord. The IRS will address continued noncompliance through a variety of treatment streams including examination.

The article has the other categories, so interested readers should go there.

The article notes in concluding:

These campaigns represent the first wave of LB&I's issue-based compliance work. The IRS said more campaigns will continue to be identified, approved and launched in the coming months. 

JAT Comment:  I am not sure what this adds to the current process.  I had only two OVDP submissions that were  not completed -- one denied and one withdrawn.  Both were audited with good results -- in the denied case, ended up with same result as OVDP (which is what we wanted in the first place) and the other got a great result (which we anticipated in withdrawing).  So my limited anecdotal experience is that the IRS was attending to this category anyway.  But, perhaps the IRS had fallen behind or some were slipping through the cracks.