Anyone ever been Audited by the IRS?
 

Our full on company Audit just started this morning and I was
just wondering if anyone else has went thru this and what was your outcome?

my fathers company was audited back in the late 90's. His audit lasted almost a month because he was assigned two new irs agents and they picked through everything.

the outcome was a 300k bill..

he settled for 50k one time payment.

it was a big pain in the ass for him because they kept interrupting his day with questions..

good luck...


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OUCH!!!
Lets hope for a better outcome for us lol

I have been audited twice. Since I keep meticulous records, both meetings lasted less than two hours. I made a mistake the first time, which actually resulted in a REFUND. LOL. The auditors and people there were super nice, too. Very easy to deal with them.

Of course you if are hiding something, then that's a whole different can of whoop-ass!

Had two of those before, never had any major issues. Few thousand Euros in fines over 5 to 10 years isn't anything special.

In some cases it's better to ask the IRS about things first in advance so they can give a written approval to make sure they approve. Saves a load of trouble years later is my experience. Or have a senior fiscalist/accountant ask the IRS things in advance for you.

Make sure you be nice to these people and give them coffee when they visit you.
Some folks are plain rude to them and they are just doing their jobs.

One of our restaurants was audited in the 90's. The agents sat at a table for a full week counting the traffic. It was a pain in the ass but we had nothing to hide so it went smoothly I think they gave us a bill of a couple grand. I have never been audited for online.

On that note I am waiting for UPS to deliver Quickbooks Pro 2011 today...

day 1 done, day 2 tomorrow

I had $4k in checks stolen from a mailbox, listed it as a loss, and that triggered an audit.

It was a pain in the ass, but my records were not all that well organized, so the hard part was getting everything well organized.

good luck!

I'm guessing you are using an accountant with power of attorney. It helps if they have audit experience. If you don't mind me asking, what do you believe triggered the audit?

I don't even think your chances of being audited are that great -- unless you have some really obviously shady, red-flag type of shit going on. Just keep a good percentage of what you do inside the lines, and your chances go way down.

Anyway, this is what my CPA told me, and he's been filing tax returns before I was born.

But you're already being audited...so I guess that doesn't help you. Good luck with that.

i hope you delcared epasse and any other off-shore bank accounts!! :P

yeah i have been through it for two years
took awhile but in the end...not bad..they are fair or were to me i thought

Several times, you just have to send them any changes they need and in some cases money. In my case I was correct and they got a flag because of a home a bought.

My main internet company was audited. I let my accountant deal with everything. Its not a fast process. After going over our books there were only a couple things (small amount of money they were questioning) then Katrina hit and they dropped it and said everything was fine. So I passed without owing anything.

It sucks paying taxes but when you get caught it sucks 100x worst. I always claim all my income but when it comes to deductions I streach it to the extreme that is legal.

I suspect there is a lot of people on here that have shitty accounting records, probably don't report income and don't keep track of expenses. They going to be screwed one day. Although, it's the people who don't follow the rules that seems to always get away with it, so I guess you never know. It pisses me off when you hear about people who owe tons of money and they get a "deal" and only have to pay 10%. Can I get 90% of what I paid back too??? My luck though, if I cheated and got caught they wouldn't cut me a deal lol.

they won't let you get away with nothing 99.9% of the time, they have to at least make up for the man hours spent on the case.

I've paid well over a million dollars in taxes from online income, for what I owed. You don't follow the rules, get caught and get "rewarded" by only having to pay like 15-20% of what you should have paid.

All the IRS does by doing shit like this is encourage people to try to cheat them. You think they would be more harsh for catching cheaters but instead they reward them.

cheaters aka "mistakes" all really the same thing.

For one a large change in company income
For two a change in the way we kept track of things ( a different accountant )

Those were the biggies

One thing I have to say is my wife keeps immaculate books so I'm not to awful worried its just been a bit stressful

Been audited several times, never a problem other than the inconvenience.
Generally it's your own error that triggers an IRS audit, or, you may have been lucky enough to be the recipient of a random audit. Randoms are few and far between compared to years gone by. They simply don't have the staff (% wise) they use to.

For what it's worth, if you triggered an audit once (regardless of outcome) then you can expect more in the future. Your ass has been painted red.

Smut peddlers have a target on their back as it is. That being said your filings and hardcopy records should always be clean as a pin.

It's the whole CYA thing.

~

well .... I once got audited but I had everything in order... so no biggie ...

That's not what I have been told. Once you were audited and passed ok then you less likely to be audited again. I was audited in 2005, haven't heard from them since.

Anyone can get audited but obviously there are triggers that set off red flags and make your odds go up. One is to show a big loss on a company. What very likely triggered mine was the way our corporate structure was set up at the time and the way money moved from one company to another, which caused one of the companies to show a big loss and the other the big profit. Not something I would suggest doing unless you really needed to keep companies separate.

in canada i was told that they are going after people who use epassporte and other simular services. so claim the money that goes through those services! its very easy for them to get your transaction records.

All such systems and money flows are properly and individually booked in all our companies, checked by accountants. So we have no worries about our local IRS checking those records.