What are the odds that 2 people from the same family (mother and son) who live 5,000 miles apart are having questions asked about their tax returns (for the same year no less) by the IRS at the same time?
He uses my address as his permanent home address with the military. Is that the link?
Or did somebody tell the IRS that they needed to look into our tax returns? (to get back at us for something we did that they did not like)
The IRS audit rate is about 1% for people making less than $200,000. If their selection is totally random, there is a 1 in 10,000 probability of this occurring by chance.
Sounds low, but a 1 in 10,000 event happens to 30,000 people each year.
I doubt it’s a coincidence, but it may not be anything sinsister either.
Maybe one of you made a mistake about claiming dependents and they want to clarify which of you is eligible.
That’s what I suspect, too. That’s exactly what happened with my sister. The tax person asked if there was anyone living with us who my parents helped pay for, and Sis was. He didn’t specify that she couldn’t also file for income tax.
No money was taken back from either person, BTW. They just told us not to do the same thing next year. We didn’t.
He hasn’t been my dependent for 5 years.
Most likely answer is the address link.
But one name popped into my head immediately when I wondered who might want to harass me a bit, and then another name came to mind for him.
I’m pessimistic enough to be worried about dealing with the IRS. I think that it is a big enough system that, even though what I have entered on my tax form is accurate, they can declare that it is not, and make me pay the difference.
I think this is not the best way of looking at it. For two random people, chosen ahead of time, the odds of both of them being audited in 1 in 10,000.
But that’s not what happened here. If pudytat hadn’t been audited, she wouldn’t have posted anything, right? So we can’t say she was chosen ahead of time. So the real question is: “Given that pudytat is being audited, what are the odds that her son is too (assuming purely random audits)?”
The answer then is 1 in 100.
So, it’s a not completely unreasonable chance that you were chosen randomly and your son was also chosen randomly: about 1% if all audits are random.
But I doubt all audits really are random, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable to audit all returns from the same address.
I got audited for tax year 2009. I had a bunch of $10 stuff here and $15 there. The tax on all that totaled to roughly $7.50. Big whoop. But somehow, I also didn’t put in my last paycheck from the Army as well. So I figure I got audited because I had a bunch of different errors and one missing W2.
Is it possible you made a few omissions like I did?
Who can say?
But you’re mistaken if you think alleging “informant treachery” is going to matter the IRS when they review your returns.
On the other hand, I hear that audits these days are much different from the myths perpetuated. Most people seem to think they go fairly pleasantly (even when the IRS finds back taxes due). I also believe the first step is usually a paper audit and does not require any in person appearance at the IRS office. So I might suggest focusing more on getting your records in order and less on what nefarious conspiracies may have brought you to this point.