The number of whisteblowers receiving cash payouts from the IRS spiked 322 percent between 2015 and 2016, resulting in more than $61 million in reward money, according to Accounting Today. However it would appear that this was because the IRS decided to prioritize larger numbers of smaller rewards; the number of awards rose from 99 to 418, but the total dollar figure is smaller than the $103 million given out the previous year. In the ten years the whistleblower program has been in existence, the IRS has paid out more than $465 million in rewards for helping collect $3.4 billion in revenue that would otherwise have been lost to fraud. The U.S. Government Accountability Office, in October 2015, reported that the program had an 11,000-case backlog due to staff not increasing alongside a growing workload. However, in the year since the report was issued, the Whistleblower Office has completely cleared that backlog, and it has implemented streamlined processes to prevent such a backlog from happening again, according to Accounting Today.