I’ve just learned this week that we’re being audited. I’m told it’s “random”. Oh and it’s not just the standard show us your receipts for ‘this deduction’ but the full National Research Project audit. I am being asked to produce not only all documentation from my wife’s freelance business but all bank statements and documentation of payment for any deduction over $100.
Have any Dopers survived an audit? Was it as bad as I fear? I used Turbo Tax and I have all the documentation filed away, even bank statements.
Can you offer words of advice? Suggest books to read? Condolences?
Don’t worry too much. Yes, it was much less painless than I feared. However, mine wasn’t a full audit but a “this form doesn’t match this information.”
Best advice - IRS agents are human beings doing a job. If you go in with the attitude “I think I did all this right, I may have made a few human mistakes, but we will figure those out, and I wasn’t to be helpful” you’ll awaken the human being. It sounds like you are in a good place for this.
Yea, from what I could tell, the IRS people are more or less on your side. I don’t think they get paid a bonus or other incentive to find errors, and so from their prospective, the best case scenario is for your stuff to all check out as quickly as possible, since it minimizes the paperwork and time they have to put in.
Obviously if you have some big error they’ll investigate it, but they’re not going to route around trying to nail you on issues of a few dollars. In my case my papers were a disorganized mess and they were still pretty understanding and helpful.
I’m sure you’ll do fine. OTOH, my CPA has a New Yorker cartoon in his office that shows a helpful IRS agent with a big smile pointing to a line on a taxpayer’s 1040 and saying to him, “Now, this? Over here? This is why you’re going to jail.”