tax audit

No one is claiming that an IRS audit is a cakewalk. But a tax audit is probably less likely -- and less gruesome -- than most people fear. And the IRS isn't allowed to swoop down upon you just any old time: Their clock is ticking.

Nobody enjoys paying taxes, so hearing that Congress is cutting the IRS budget might inspire you to applaud. But this is the agency that makes sure the rest of government gets funded, and stops the unscrupulous from dodging their fair share of the burden.

The IRS has made no secret of the fact that it is ramping up audits in order to close the "tax gap." The "tax gap" is the difference between what the IRS expects to collect and what it actually does collect. In 2005, the IRS estimated this gross tax gap, before collections efforts, to be...

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...

For the fiscal year 2009, about 1.4 million taxpayers were chosen for audit. This represents about 1% of the 140 million tax returns filed in 2008 -- pretty good odds. Of those, about 75% were correspondence, or "paper" audits, and the remaining 25% were field or "in person" audits. Even though the...

Early tax projections from the Tax Policy Center suggest that 45% of Americans will pay no federal income tax for 2009. Credits, deductions, and tax breaks have whittled down the federal income tax liability for most Americans -- from the poorest to the wealthiest -- such that many Americans will...

The good news: You survived an audit. So what now? If you are audited and the result is that there are no adjustments to your return (or if you get a refund), it decreases your odds of being audited in subsequent years. If you are audited on the same items two years in a row with no additional...

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...