audit

Unless you've filed for an extension, today is the last day to get your taxes turned in to the IRS. It also happens to be Tax Freedom Day, when the average American has worked enough days to have paid all their taxes for the year.

For whatever reason, celebrities often end up crossing paths with the IRS, and surprisingly, most of the problems they have with the tax man are traps anyone could fall into. Here are some common mistakes of the stars, and what you can do to avoid them.

Audits are avoidable: From outlandish charitable giving to claiming a home office, there are a host of specific thing that can set of warning bells with the IRS. Here are the things the IRS looks for, and tips to help you avoid its scrutiny.

Male, single, age 45 and under. Big spender. Sounds like a dating ad from the classifieds, right? Not quite. That, according to a study by the advertising and marketing firm DDB Worldwide Communications Group, is the profile of the person most likely to cheat on a federal income tax return.

For the fiscal year 2009, about one out of every 100 taxpayers were chosen for an audit. In terms of numbers, 1.4 million taxpayers were selected for either a correspondence or a personal audit. Statistically, those are pretty good odds for taxpayers. While there's no magic formula to determine...

The three most intimidating letters of the alphabet for most Americans are I-R-S. Very few things strike more fear in a taxpayer's heart than the thought of being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. For years, reports of abuse of power and poor treatment from the IRS ran rampant. That led...

It's no secret that the IRS is ramping up the number of audits in an attempt to close the "tax gap." That's the term the IRS is using to account for the difference between the taxes it believes it should have collected and what it actually managed to collect. For 2001 (the last year for which data...

Koss Corp. has sued its auditor, Grant Thornton, for failing to find the alleged $31 million fraud perpetrated by Koss' VP of Finance. It's easy to point fingers, but in this case, it seems clear the blame lies with Koss management.

Nearly 15 years ago, I walked into a room of well-dressed bankers and attorneys with an audit letter in my hand. I was probably the most nervous person in the room. I was interning at the IRS estates attorney division, and this visit marked the first time that I would take the lead on an audit. I...

Want to lower your odds of an IRS audit? Try filing as a multibillion-dollar corporation. The IRS has cut back the time it spends auditing large companies by a third, even though auditors recover $9,354 per hour from their filing errors -- eight times more than is recovered in audits of smaller businesses.