Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This report provides data on the number and characteristics of large partnerships as well as Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audits of large partnership returns. For purposes of this report, GAO did not identify a statutory, IRS, or industry-accepted definition of a large partnership. Instead, GAO used a combination of criteria for partner size and asset size used by IRS to define large partnerships as those that reported having 100 or more direct partners and $100 million or more in assets. The number of large partnerships increased from 720 in tax year 2002 to 2,226 in tax year 2011. Large partnerships also increased in terms of the average number of direct partners and average asset size. IRS had data on two categories of large partnership return audits. First, the number of completed field audits of large partnership returns increased from 11 in fiscal year 2007 to 31 in fiscal year 2013. Second, IRS counted audits closed through its campus function, which increased from 42 to 143 over the same period. Unlike field audits, campus function audits generally do not entail a review of the books and records of the …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Commercial U.S. Arctic maritime activities are expected to be limited for the next 10 years, according to industry representatives, due to a variety of factors. Interviews with industry representatives highlighted a variety of general challenges related to operating in the Arctic, such as geography, extreme weather, and hard-to-predict ice floes. Industry-specific factors were also cited as contributing to limited commercial activity. For example, shipping companies noted higher costs with Arctic transit; cruise industry groups noted a lack of demand for Arctic cruises from the mainstream cruise-consumer base, and oil companies last drilled offshore exploratory wells in the U.S. Arctic in 2012."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has taken steps to include auto industry employees in its Whistleblower Protection Program and has coordinated with the Department of Transportation (DOT) on whistleblower issues, but interagency collaborative mechanisms could be strengthened. Among other steps, OSHA is developing procedures for how it will investigate claims from auto employees and estimates most of its efforts will be completed in 2014. OSHA documents its collaboration with DOT's component agencies on whistleblower protections by developing memorandums of agreements (MOA), and currently MOAs cover aviation and rail employees; the agencies are considering developing MOAs to cover other transportation sectors such as commercial motor-carrier employees. Officials from both OSHA and DOT believe it is important to identify or refer potential claims of retaliation and safety violations to each other. In September 2012, GAO concluded that collaboration is critical when meaningful results that the federal government seeks to achieve require the coordinated efforts of more than one federal agency. Among others, key practices of effective collaboration include clearly delineating roles and responsibilities and monitoring progress. OSHA and DOT officials agree that following GAO's key practices …