IRS Turns to Computers to Choose Who Gets Audited and Who Doesn't

Taxpayers audited by the IRS arent selected randomly by humans any longer. Theyre chosen methodically by computers looking, line by line, for irregularities in tax returns. An Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audit can make even an honest and thorough taxpayer worried. In fact though, an IRS audit is simply a review of your tax return to determine how accurate it is.

Taxpayers Likely to be Audited

• People who receive cash for their work instead of or supplementing a paycheck are more likely to be audited than others because people in these lines of work such as servers and hairstylists often do not declare all of their income and the IRS realizes this. The best way for these workers to do well in an audit is to declare all of their income and this includes tips.
• People who run their own businesses are also likely to be targeted for an IRS audit. If you notice that accountants, lawyers and doctors tend to be audited, many of them run their own businesses and are responsible for their own bookkeeping.
• Taxpayers who make large and unusual deductions are readily spotted by IRS computers so people who make these types of deductions should be sure they are justified.
• Deductions such as medical and casualty loss that must exceed a certain amount of your income before they can be claimed, large charity contribution deductions and home office deductions are the deductions most likely to be questioned.
• Other factors that increase the chance of an IRS audit include drastic changes in income from year-to-year, a lot of round numbers on your return such as 5,000 as these are rare in real life, incomplete or illegible returns, a low income compared to place of residence or financial obligations and differences between federal and state returns because employees do compare data on returns.

To help combat the problem of taxpayers who dont pay all of their taxes, officials at the Internal Revenue Service have announced plans to start a new National Research Program (NRP) study for individual taxpayers that will provide updated and more accurate audit selection tools.

The IRS will be choosing 13,000 taxpayers for audits at random for the study. The IRS plans to select taxpayers from various income categories and use the data collected to update the criteria it uses to determine what returns to audit with the goal of doing a better a job of catching people who dont pay their taxes in full or at all. A sample of 13,000 taxpayers is small compared to the around 136 million people who pay taxes yet the 13,000 taxpayer audit will probably include more people than a regular audit.

This latest NRP study, which will begin in October 2007 and examine approximately 13,000 random tax year 2006 individual returns, will be the first of an ongoing series of annual individual studies using a multi-year rolling methodology. Similar sample sizes will be used in subsequent tax years.

An advantage of using this method compared to previous studies which selected tax returns from over 45,000 taxpayers during a single year is that by combining results over rolling three-year periods, the IRS will be able to make updates and develop more efficient plans on an annual basis, after the initial three studies.

The main reason for these random audits is to reduce the nations tax gap, which results from un-filed returns, underreporting income and underpaying taxes. The tax gap is the difference between what the IRS receives in tax payments and what they should have received from taxpayers. To an individual taxpayer, the tax gap might not seem like a lot, but it adds up. IRS officials estimate that the net tax gap for tax year 2001 was $290 billion.

The initial group of 13,000 taxpayers whose returns are chosen for audit under the new NRP study will begin receiving official letters in October informing them that they are part of the IRS research study. The majority of the individuals selected will have certain lines of their tax returns confirmed during in-person audits with an IRS examiner. When deciding whether you need a tax professional to help you face an in-person IRS audit, consider the tax amount being questioned compared to the cost of professional assistance.

Becky Schmitz is a Certified Tax Resolution Specialist, a member of the American Society of IRS Problem Solvers and an Enrolled Agent. You can contact her at 406-651-4445 to obtain a free subscription to her newsletter titled The IRS Times & Inquirer. Becky Schmitz is also owner of Centsable Accounting (http://www.centsableaccounting.com/), a tax problem resolution firm in Billings, Montana that offers tax related services including IRS audit representation.

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