Have you ever been audited?

IRS Revives Random Audit Program.

44% on this AOL poll said they had been audited. Seems like a rather high number.

http://news.aol.com/business/story/_a/irs-revives-random-audit-program/20070927170209990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

Cause I sure haven't been able to it.

All "random." The first two times they complimented me on a clear, accurate, and complete return. (It was in the 70s, before nearly anyone had computers - 'cept me.) The last time, they tried to disallow legitimate deductions - and I had to escalate on appeal. (I had a tax attorney/CPA.) During this, I moved and the California Region agreed with me and canceled the penalties, interest and any further tax due.

The regions are very different. Believe it. They can get away with damned near anything they want to. The vast majority of all individual taxpayers overpay by not taking advantage of lots of little things that're hard to find and comprehend - or by not wanting to bother with the record-keeping. It adds up. It's huge. The Tax Code is definitely written to benefit people with their own tax attorneys.

These are the old TCMP (Taxpayer Compliance Monitoring Program) audits.

They audit every deduction and source of income that you have. The IRS is not looking for anything specific; but rather is trying to get information on where taxpayers lie (either intentionally or unintentionally) on their tax return.

Once the statistics are gathered, they are entered into the IRS computer and comparisons are made between the returns that have been filed and the "profile" of bad returns.

As I recall the last time this was done was about 10 to 15 years ago...

On edit: I still can't spell...

is that just about 1/2 have been audited

and from the lawyer, the type of audit was not one he had seen since oh... the good ol' days of 1973

Enemies list anyone and random my ass

I remodeled my upstairs into an apartment and deducted everything as a business expense. The problem was some of the deductions were capital expenditures and Uncle sam didn't like it that I took them off in one lump sum. Really was my accountant's fault. He didn't capitalize stuff like carpeting and appliances. The following two audits were nuisance audits as everything was OK. They were nice enough to let me take mileage to the IRS office (61m one way) off the following year's return tho. Wasn't that sweet?