Purpose of a tax audit

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- oprah.chopra
  
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posted
16 years ago

Mon, Nov 26, 2007 12:42 AM

I am reading a book called 'How to survive a tax audit'. From what I gather, it seems the purpose of a tax audit is to find errors in your deductions so that the government can collect major taxes that are due.

For this reason the auditor is only interested in possible errors with large deductions so their time is justified in collecting the due tax.

Is this correct, or are audits also about checking compliance with tax rules. Is an auditor going to waste hours of your time trying to collect $50 in taxes because of innocent errors and misinterpretations of tax law? While I am sure there are some who do so, my guess is they are a small minority.

My reason for this discussion is so I can figure out how much time/money I need to spend to have my returns done correctly, vs mostly correct? If it will cost me more in tax preparer hourly fees to pay a tax I can guestimate, should I stall pay the tax preparer and have it done 'correctly'?

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- Mark Bole
  
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posted
16 years ago

Mon, Nov 26, 2007 1:09 AM

I can imagine more than a few situations where it would not take "hours" to identify $50 in uncollected tax. Correspondence audits, especially when initiated by a computer scoring process, may only take a few moments to identify many times that amount in potentially unpaid tax. I don't have statistics at hand, but I'm sure there are many audits which do not result in any additional assessment of tax, or which even result in a reduction in tax, so your theory as to the purpose of audits doesn't hold up.

-Mark Bole

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- Arthur Kamlet
  
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posted
16 years ago

Mon, Nov 26, 2007 2:55 AM

Let me just add that any audit is simply to verify that the return is prepared correctly. I have seen a number of audits that end up finding additional deductions or credits.

But the IRS does have its own unpublished audit selection criteria.

As far as playing Audit Lottery as you are suggesting, I just won't go there. If you tell me that some part of your return is not correct, either correct it or find some other preparer.