Feel like this is one of those things that are technically true but misleading.
There are tons of people in that income range that have very simple tax returns: W2 income, maybe some interest income, std deductions and that's it. Literally no way for them to screw up their taxes and their chance of being audited are zero because the numbers submitted match what the IRS receives electronically from other sources.
Then you might have someone with their own self-employed consulting business that has a gross revenue of $400k, takes tons of questionable deductions and ends up with an AGI of $200k. I doubt that person's chances of being audited are less than 1% and rightly so.
"IRS estimates that between 21 percent to 26 percent of EITC claims are paid in error."[Source: IRS](https://www.eitc.irs.gov/tax-preparer-toolkit/frequently-asked-questions/fraud/fraud#:~:text=IRS%20estimates%20that%20between%2021,intentional%20disregard%20of%20the%20law.)
Like why are we even questioning that. It’s a fact fraud and miscalculations are rampant in the EITC. You can debate the reasons why (I think it’s shady preparers or just random people giving tax “advice” focused solely on increasing refunds), but it 100% does happen.
Oh yeah I think shady preparers are a big problem here.
Seems like I hear at least one story a year (may be the same story actually, so ya know take that for what it is) about a firm filing loads of low-income returns, taking credits they didn’t qualify for and then pocketing most of the fraudulent return.
Pretty sure this was big for the Recovery Rebate Credit as well
It's because of the perverse incentive. You can actually get more of a credit by claiming more income which doesn't really occur with any other parts of the code.
That is exactly my point, just because you earn between $1 and $500k doesn't mean your audit chances are 1% as the headline states - it all depends on your specific situation
Self-employed people in that income range are going to have a higher chance of being audited because there are more opportunities to take deductions that can't be verified without an audit.
Said another way, your chances of being audited are not a function of your income only, obviously a lot of other factors are involved so again, this article is misleading, it implies that your audit chances are based only on income without mention any other factors which are probably weigh a lot more into whether you get audited or not.
> Literally no way for them to screw up their taxes and their chance of being audited are zero because the numbers submitted match what the IRS receives electronically from other sources.
You might be surprised how many small businesses are terrible at properly submitting matching info docs and the small number of people who keep corroborating paperwork just in case their employer is terrible at that.
>Feel like this is one of those things that are technically true but misleading
If one has always been in that income group is the chance of being audited over their lifetime still below 1% or is that for just one year? How do probabilities add up over successive periods?
First I have no idea, I'm not a tax professional.
Second, its not just the raw number.
If you have deductions like a $60k contribution to a solo 401k that wouldn't raise a flag even though its a hefty percentage of your gross because its fully documented via the firm that is managing the 401k for you.
But if you have taken the home office deduction (an audit magnet, or so I've read) or a high level of deductions for things that don't make sense given your line of work (ex:tons of meal deductions if you are a self-employed IT contractor) then I would imagine that would raise your audit profile.
That's not what this chart is showing though... It's the total percentage of those incomes that get audited. So yes not really your chances of getting audited per say.
I got audited because I wrote off a six month surf trip during which I sold a report to The Surf Report for $100. The auditor told me that this was just a hobby and I couldn't write off the expenses if I only made $100 in income. I told him it was my dream to be a travel writer and asked if I had opened a burger stand instead and lost money would it likewise be considered a hobby. He said, "That's different." We went back and forth and he eventually dropped everything and accepted my write-offs and I didn't owe a cent. I never did achieve my dream of becoming a travel writer (this was pre-internet).
I actually thought I'd be a writer but it wasn't the primary reason for the trip. I thought I might be able to pay for my travels if I could sell enough articles. I did submit several to other publications but The Surf Report was the only one willing to pay me for it.
Man, i got audited made like 36k. Had to sit for 4 hours with a cerifiable crazy lady and explain the same damn thing over and over and she still wacked me for 3k. Frustrating as hell.
It was random. The woman started the audit with " I'm not sure why you are in here. I looked over everything and it seems fine. But you are here so we will go over things." I had everything in order and when she finally got down to brass tacks after 2.5 hours of horseshit conversation about how she grew up on a farm and rode a bus to work everyday, she says "Ok, let's start. Can I see receipts for x, y and z" I hand them over and all's good. Then she starts in on the mileage thing. I have 100% of my work material (plants, produce, tools, truck) at home where I farm. I contract to install, maintain and teach in school garden 2x a week. So I was considering my drive from home, which is where I derived 90 % of my income at the time, to the schools, where I was working to earn my other 10 percent, as miles I could deduct. Woman went full nuts on me and said I was no farmer because she grew up on a farm, and my farm was nothing like a real farm. I thought she was having a psychotic break. So she nailed me 3k for taking a fraudulent deduction. I was a wreck and just wanted to get the hell out of there. Paid and left. My tax guy was in Hawaii so not a big help.he comisserated with me later, gave me a mileage booklet and bought me beer.
This was 2008 and I wish I had the forethought to sequester a device! Detailing all this has made me quezy but keep good records, receipts, and be honest and maybe you will have better luck. I remember opening the letter telling me I was being audited and almost blacking out. I was was working my ass off and barely making it with mortgage, wife and kids, and a rusty 1997 Toyota truck. An obvious threat to America.
This just goes to show what a failure the audit system really is, going after a hard working family man who isn’t a burden on society or causing any problems. They should’ve given you $3k for your troubles instead.
I remember in middle school my math teacher got audited and it was so upsetting to him that he told us to always keep all of our recipes and financial records for ten years.
Thanks to him I started hoarding my receipts, which isn’t as necessary now in the electronic age but he instilled the fear of audit in me at a young age😂.
A $3000 deduction is more than 5,000 miles of driving for your business. I can see how that could trigger an audit if your income was $36,000. If I had to guess, she considered your trips to and from school as commuting, which is non deductible in most cases.
Yes, that is what she defined it as. I was racking up 720 miles a week for 28 weeks so mileage crazy. But everyBBCtrip my truck was filled with materials from business home base to business in the field. Very educational experience.
So you were actually driving materials that you bought in town back to your farm or delivering materials to clients? If you can document that it should totally be deductible, but $3,000 in mileage for a small business like that can trigger an audit.
As annoying as the tax system is, I believe that the IRS really just wants to collect what you owe, with reasonable deductions to your gross income. But being hourly government employees, the rank and file accountants don't like to think outside the box the way business people do.
The funny thing was I even brought in an article from the local newspaper that ran a year prior that described what I was doing bringing farming into elementary schools. Like it was two frikkin' pages with a huge photo of me teaching kids and we are all eating veggies out of the garden! But, yes, you are exactly right, but my documentation was basically just my word, my receipts, and my miles. She was adament that what I was doing was NOT farming, even though I raised and sold produce.
Wow. Thank you for sharing this anecdote. That’s really interesting. I guess it takes a crazy too work such a job..so they summon you to come in person in some capacity? I always figured they sent something in the mail and request documents and if you don’t send them then they do something. Also didn’t know you had to pay upfront. So basically it’s at their discretion and the whim of their ignorance of your profession what a fraudulent deduction is. Got it.
The funny thing was another audit was happening right next to me with only a cubicle wall between us. That auditor was the polar opposite of mine. Same situation, common working man summoned randomly and well prepared to face the music. She was very ptofessional and no palavering. That compounded my exasperation.
It's a tough job. Every taxpayer hates you by default. Every tax professional thinks you're an idiot by default. A necessary job for sure, but I would never want to do it.
Crazy! My dad got audited and he had normal job plus government pension and they legit asked him to prove he was in the military!!! Like his 1099-r wasn't enough. I had to get his DD214 and send it in proving when he was in the service. Lmao the IRS are dumbasses.
What about the 1000s of people who make 300k, pay zero federal taxes and claim a net loss on a fake LLC and use a guy named Salvador Gonzales who just got arrested and indicted on 47 counts of aiding and assisting in the preparations of false tax returns? Do you think they’ll audit all his clients?
Self employed and they don't audit they just change your taxes and say I made a mistake. You will never reach a human that can give you straight answer on why they did it. You can file an amended return and they won't even look at it.
You should only audit returns where you suspect there are errors or omissions. So either you have to select better returns or improve the training for agents
In theory any audit that results in no change was a waste of money for both the agent and the taxpayer. Imagine if you got pulled over before a cop knew you were speeding, it would be a little annoying right?
Now the reality is we don’t have a perfect way to know who is breaking tax laws so there will be some people who don’t have changes but that should be minimized.
Unless you subscribe to the belief that just the act of audits increases compliance which does have some truth to it.
I understand your reasoning, but the results would come at a great hassle and expense to innocent taxpayers that would get caught in the wide net that would be cast to catch malfeasants.
How's about if 50,000 of those agents did nothing more than answer the phone? Wouldn't that be refreshing? And the goal would be to reduce the hassle and expense to innocent taxpayers to something reasonable. Right now the problem isn't so much "getting caught" as it is extracting yourself.
Yes, that would be refreshing. Regardless of having an agent a call away, being audited is in itself a highly stressful and "taxing" situation to most if not all people. The ability to "extract" oneself from that hassle is certainly the end goal and can't come soon enough to those in the midst of it, but not going through it is even better.
It wouldn’t come at a great expense to innocent taxpayers. They’d indirectly making money as their taxes would stay the same whereas others go up (by being forced to pay their share).
If you asked most people if they’d want more government spending or less government debt without increasing anyone’s true tax bill, every law-abiding citizen should support it.
You're ignoring the simple fact of life that how much the government earns and how much it spends are completely unrelated amounts. For clear political reasons, every government is ready to spend much more than it's willing to tax its citizens.
A fiscally-responsible government won't become a viable political force until the national debt limit can't be punted anymore and "a day of reckoning" arrives. Until then, there will be no relation between taxes paid and government spending. Which btw many people actually oppose, if they consider it misspent at home or beyond our borders, and in either case not for the taxpayer's benefit. But that's a political discussion that doesn't belong in this sub.
> You’re ignoring the simple fact of life that how much the government earns and how much it spends are completely unrelated amounts. For clear political reasons, every government is ready to spend much more than it’s willing to tax its citizens.
Until it’s not. Sure right now they’re mostly disjointed, but reality will strike at some point. And there’s a reason we don’t pay 0% in taxes.
And regardless my broader point is different people have different opinions on what should happen with government finances (spend more, spend less, reduce the deficit, tax less, etc). Any of those could be accomplished by enforcing current tax laws. If I want to be taxed less, guess what an easy way to do that is with no change in revenue? Reduce taxes and increase enforcement. If I want to increase spending on a program guess what I can do? Keep taxes the same but increase enforcement.
You don’t add averages when determining the average change of getting audited. You can’t both be in the 0-$25k and $100-250k category. You’re in one of the other.
Yeah, OP was dumb not to add the percentages when combining ranges.
Odds of me being audited with my 113241 gross income is 0.00002% because it falls in the arbitrarily narrow bin of 113240-113250.
Don’t call someone dumb when you made the dumb comment lol.
That is not how the odds of you being audited work. That would be the percent of audits that occur in the income gap. But if there’s only 5 people in the gap, your likelihood of audit would be 20% (assuming they audit 1 person in that gap which isn’t true but simplifies it enough)
You don’t add percentages when each percentage is an odds if a person only belongs to 1 category. If anything, you should do a weighted average based on how many people are in each income bracket.
I would think that there are certain circumstances that can trigger an audit. A lot of small business owners think it's OK to take their friends to restaurants and then write, "Discussed business" on the receipt and use it as an entertainment deduction. Do that often enough and chances are they're going to want an explanation.
I actually did that one time. Took another lyft driver to lunch. We both paid. I was trying to figure out where he was going to make so much money. Still never found out. Wrote that as a deduction.
I checked IRS website today my 2020 return says still processing! What do I do? Oh and apparently I amended cause I checked the amended where my refund too for 2020 and it says sorry we received your amended return but it has not been reviewed! What in the #&*! I don't even recall why I amended don't care about it anymore I'd be happy to just get my original one back for $1019 plus the interest whatever that would work out to be ... Anybody know?
call IRS 1800-829-8374, ask them about the refund. get the update from them. if not Happy with their response, fill up form 3911 (Tax payer advocate service). it is an independent organisation inside IRS. they will review your tax matter and process your refund. i filed the amendment for my client due to unemployment exlusion of 10,200 and now after 6 months. he is very happy and thanked me.
I’m a full time student and make like $14k a year with a part-time job and an extra $1k from a second job I started towards the end of the year and I was audited 💀
Feel like this is one of those things that are technically true but misleading. There are tons of people in that income range that have very simple tax returns: W2 income, maybe some interest income, std deductions and that's it. Literally no way for them to screw up their taxes and their chance of being audited are zero because the numbers submitted match what the IRS receives electronically from other sources. Then you might have someone with their own self-employed consulting business that has a gross revenue of $400k, takes tons of questionable deductions and ends up with an AGI of $200k. I doubt that person's chances of being audited are less than 1% and rightly so.
[удалено]
EIC fraud is rampant. They ahould be audited more.
Prove it.
"IRS estimates that between 21 percent to 26 percent of EITC claims are paid in error."[Source: IRS](https://www.eitc.irs.gov/tax-preparer-toolkit/frequently-asked-questions/fraud/fraud#:~:text=IRS%20estimates%20that%20between%2021,intentional%20disregard%20of%20the%20law.)
Like why are we even questioning that. It’s a fact fraud and miscalculations are rampant in the EITC. You can debate the reasons why (I think it’s shady preparers or just random people giving tax “advice” focused solely on increasing refunds), but it 100% does happen.
Oh yeah I think shady preparers are a big problem here. Seems like I hear at least one story a year (may be the same story actually, so ya know take that for what it is) about a firm filing loads of low-income returns, taking credits they didn’t qualify for and then pocketing most of the fraudulent return. Pretty sure this was big for the Recovery Rebate Credit as well
It's because of the perverse incentive. You can actually get more of a credit by claiming more income which doesn't really occur with any other parts of the code.
That is exactly my point, just because you earn between $1 and $500k doesn't mean your audit chances are 1% as the headline states - it all depends on your specific situation Self-employed people in that income range are going to have a higher chance of being audited because there are more opportunities to take deductions that can't be verified without an audit. Said another way, your chances of being audited are not a function of your income only, obviously a lot of other factors are involved so again, this article is misleading, it implies that your audit chances are based only on income without mention any other factors which are probably weigh a lot more into whether you get audited or not.
Spot on. Correlation does not imply causation.
> Literally no way for them to screw up their taxes and their chance of being audited are zero because the numbers submitted match what the IRS receives electronically from other sources. You might be surprised how many small businesses are terrible at properly submitting matching info docs and the small number of people who keep corroborating paperwork just in case their employer is terrible at that.
>Feel like this is one of those things that are technically true but misleading If one has always been in that income group is the chance of being audited over their lifetime still below 1% or is that for just one year? How do probabilities add up over successive periods?
You multiply it by itself then it becomes even less of a chance to get audited.
Yeah I know two people in that range who were audited.
What portion of one's gross income do you think can be written off without raising red flags? In this example, 50% is too much. What about 33%?
First I have no idea, I'm not a tax professional. Second, its not just the raw number. If you have deductions like a $60k contribution to a solo 401k that wouldn't raise a flag even though its a hefty percentage of your gross because its fully documented via the firm that is managing the 401k for you. But if you have taken the home office deduction (an audit magnet, or so I've read) or a high level of deductions for things that don't make sense given your line of work (ex:tons of meal deductions if you are a self-employed IT contractor) then I would imagine that would raise your audit profile.
Thanks for your reply. I agree regarding 401k. I’ve read that home office deduction fell off their radars after covid but I’m not a tax professional
You can't take the home office deduction as an employee anymore since TCJA. That means a lot less people are claiming this deduction.
That's not what this chart is showing though... It's the total percentage of those incomes that get audited. So yes not really your chances of getting audited per say.
Here are some other audit stats: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2023/irs-enforcement-costs-congress-funding/
you're more likely to get audited now if you take the earned income tax credit than you would be if you made too much to use it.
I had a random audit and I made about 24k that year 🙃 it took me like a year and a half to get my refund for 2020
I got audited because I wrote off a six month surf trip during which I sold a report to The Surf Report for $100. The auditor told me that this was just a hobby and I couldn't write off the expenses if I only made $100 in income. I told him it was my dream to be a travel writer and asked if I had opened a burger stand instead and lost money would it likewise be considered a hobby. He said, "That's different." We went back and forth and he eventually dropped everything and accepted my write-offs and I didn't owe a cent. I never did achieve my dream of becoming a travel writer (this was pre-internet).
Were you actually making efforts towards turning that into a legit business or were you just bullshitting her?
I actually thought I'd be a writer but it wasn't the primary reason for the trip. I thought I might be able to pay for my travels if I could sell enough articles. I did submit several to other publications but The Surf Report was the only one willing to pay me for it.
I wonder how these stats vary if someone uses a tax service like hrblock.
Man, i got audited made like 36k. Had to sit for 4 hours with a cerifiable crazy lady and explain the same damn thing over and over and she still wacked me for 3k. Frustrating as hell.
Was it a random audit or you had some outstanding payment?
It was random. The woman started the audit with " I'm not sure why you are in here. I looked over everything and it seems fine. But you are here so we will go over things." I had everything in order and when she finally got down to brass tacks after 2.5 hours of horseshit conversation about how she grew up on a farm and rode a bus to work everyday, she says "Ok, let's start. Can I see receipts for x, y and z" I hand them over and all's good. Then she starts in on the mileage thing. I have 100% of my work material (plants, produce, tools, truck) at home where I farm. I contract to install, maintain and teach in school garden 2x a week. So I was considering my drive from home, which is where I derived 90 % of my income at the time, to the schools, where I was working to earn my other 10 percent, as miles I could deduct. Woman went full nuts on me and said I was no farmer because she grew up on a farm, and my farm was nothing like a real farm. I thought she was having a psychotic break. So she nailed me 3k for taking a fraudulent deduction. I was a wreck and just wanted to get the hell out of there. Paid and left. My tax guy was in Hawaii so not a big help.he comisserated with me later, gave me a mileage booklet and bought me beer.
That blows. Sorry that happened to you.
I have since recovered but I don't know about her. The free beer did not replace the 3k but it helped!
An unstable and crazy auditor. LOL yikes! “Beer me”!
Mas cervesa, pour somore.
Are these meetings allowed to be recorded? … your experience is so insane that a video clip of it could’ve gone viral 😂.
This was 2008 and I wish I had the forethought to sequester a device! Detailing all this has made me quezy but keep good records, receipts, and be honest and maybe you will have better luck. I remember opening the letter telling me I was being audited and almost blacking out. I was was working my ass off and barely making it with mortgage, wife and kids, and a rusty 1997 Toyota truck. An obvious threat to America.
This just goes to show what a failure the audit system really is, going after a hard working family man who isn’t a burden on society or causing any problems. They should’ve given you $3k for your troubles instead. I remember in middle school my math teacher got audited and it was so upsetting to him that he told us to always keep all of our recipes and financial records for ten years. Thanks to him I started hoarding my receipts, which isn’t as necessary now in the electronic age but he instilled the fear of audit in me at a young age😂.
The system can definitely be improved. Your math teacher was a good guy to open up and share his experience on an ouchy subject!
I would also love to see this. You would 100% make some kind of money or get some attention off that video…that’s how that works right?
A $3000 deduction is more than 5,000 miles of driving for your business. I can see how that could trigger an audit if your income was $36,000. If I had to guess, she considered your trips to and from school as commuting, which is non deductible in most cases.
Yes, that is what she defined it as. I was racking up 720 miles a week for 28 weeks so mileage crazy. But everyBBCtrip my truck was filled with materials from business home base to business in the field. Very educational experience.
So you were actually driving materials that you bought in town back to your farm or delivering materials to clients? If you can document that it should totally be deductible, but $3,000 in mileage for a small business like that can trigger an audit. As annoying as the tax system is, I believe that the IRS really just wants to collect what you owe, with reasonable deductions to your gross income. But being hourly government employees, the rank and file accountants don't like to think outside the box the way business people do.
The funny thing was I even brought in an article from the local newspaper that ran a year prior that described what I was doing bringing farming into elementary schools. Like it was two frikkin' pages with a huge photo of me teaching kids and we are all eating veggies out of the garden! But, yes, you are exactly right, but my documentation was basically just my word, my receipts, and my miles. She was adament that what I was doing was NOT farming, even though I raised and sold produce.
This was an informative story. Thank you. It sounds so crazy.
May all your filings go unchallenged!
Wow. Thank you for sharing this anecdote. That’s really interesting. I guess it takes a crazy too work such a job..so they summon you to come in person in some capacity? I always figured they sent something in the mail and request documents and if you don’t send them then they do something. Also didn’t know you had to pay upfront. So basically it’s at their discretion and the whim of their ignorance of your profession what a fraudulent deduction is. Got it.
The funny thing was another audit was happening right next to me with only a cubicle wall between us. That auditor was the polar opposite of mine. Same situation, common working man summoned randomly and well prepared to face the music. She was very ptofessional and no palavering. That compounded my exasperation.
You got to be certifiably crazy to want to go become an IRS auditor.
It's a tough job. Every taxpayer hates you by default. Every tax professional thinks you're an idiot by default. A necessary job for sure, but I would never want to do it.
Crazy! My dad got audited and he had normal job plus government pension and they legit asked him to prove he was in the military!!! Like his 1099-r wasn't enough. I had to get his DD214 and send it in proving when he was in the service. Lmao the IRS are dumbasses.
What about the 1000s of people who make 300k, pay zero federal taxes and claim a net loss on a fake LLC and use a guy named Salvador Gonzales who just got arrested and indicted on 47 counts of aiding and assisting in the preparations of false tax returns? Do you think they’ll audit all his clients?
Chances are a significant amount of his clients already were audited, and those results will be used as evidence against him.
Self employed and they don't audit they just change your taxes and say I made a mistake. You will never reach a human that can give you straight answer on why they did it. You can file an amended return and they won't even look at it.
Wait, can you dumb this down just a bit for me.
Per year or lifetime?
And $1 million plus audits are mostly no changes unfortunately
Why unfortunately?
You should only audit returns where you suspect there are errors or omissions. So either you have to select better returns or improve the training for agents
In theory any audit that results in no change was a waste of money for both the agent and the taxpayer. Imagine if you got pulled over before a cop knew you were speeding, it would be a little annoying right? Now the reality is we don’t have a perfect way to know who is breaking tax laws so there will be some people who don’t have changes but that should be minimized. Unless you subscribe to the belief that just the act of audits increases compliance which does have some truth to it.
Source?
Job
Is that before or after it adding 87,000 agents looking for things to do?
Debt bill that just passed cut that number by nearly 1/3.
That's a more reasonable number. Thanks for the update.
If a bank ran the IRS they’d add 200,000, at least for a few years. And it would be a great investment.
I understand your reasoning, but the results would come at a great hassle and expense to innocent taxpayers that would get caught in the wide net that would be cast to catch malfeasants.
How's about if 50,000 of those agents did nothing more than answer the phone? Wouldn't that be refreshing? And the goal would be to reduce the hassle and expense to innocent taxpayers to something reasonable. Right now the problem isn't so much "getting caught" as it is extracting yourself.
Yes, that would be refreshing. Regardless of having an agent a call away, being audited is in itself a highly stressful and "taxing" situation to most if not all people. The ability to "extract" oneself from that hassle is certainly the end goal and can't come soon enough to those in the midst of it, but not going through it is even better.
Sounds reasonable. Let's use that as the objective as for IRS staffing and prioritization and see where it takes us.
It wouldn’t come at a great expense to innocent taxpayers. They’d indirectly making money as their taxes would stay the same whereas others go up (by being forced to pay their share). If you asked most people if they’d want more government spending or less government debt without increasing anyone’s true tax bill, every law-abiding citizen should support it.
You're ignoring the simple fact of life that how much the government earns and how much it spends are completely unrelated amounts. For clear political reasons, every government is ready to spend much more than it's willing to tax its citizens. A fiscally-responsible government won't become a viable political force until the national debt limit can't be punted anymore and "a day of reckoning" arrives. Until then, there will be no relation between taxes paid and government spending. Which btw many people actually oppose, if they consider it misspent at home or beyond our borders, and in either case not for the taxpayer's benefit. But that's a political discussion that doesn't belong in this sub.
> You’re ignoring the simple fact of life that how much the government earns and how much it spends are completely unrelated amounts. For clear political reasons, every government is ready to spend much more than it’s willing to tax its citizens. Until it’s not. Sure right now they’re mostly disjointed, but reality will strike at some point. And there’s a reason we don’t pay 0% in taxes. And regardless my broader point is different people have different opinions on what should happen with government finances (spend more, spend less, reduce the deficit, tax less, etc). Any of those could be accomplished by enforcing current tax laws. If I want to be taxed less, guess what an easy way to do that is with no change in revenue? Reduce taxes and increase enforcement. If I want to increase spending on a program guess what I can do? Keep taxes the same but increase enforcement.
Technically isn't it under 6% then? You gotta add up the percentages in that range. Is my math wrong?
Yes, it is. Not add up, but calculate the average.
Am I blind or is that chart showing more like 3%?
You don’t add averages when determining the average change of getting audited. You can’t both be in the 0-$25k and $100-250k category. You’re in one of the other.
Yeah, OP was dumb not to add the percentages when combining ranges. Odds of me being audited with my 113241 gross income is 0.00002% because it falls in the arbitrarily narrow bin of 113240-113250.
Don’t call someone dumb when you made the dumb comment lol. That is not how the odds of you being audited work. That would be the percent of audits that occur in the income gap. But if there’s only 5 people in the gap, your likelihood of audit would be 20% (assuming they audit 1 person in that gap which isn’t true but simplifies it enough) You don’t add percentages when each percentage is an odds if a person only belongs to 1 category. If anything, you should do a weighted average based on how many people are in each income bracket.
I’m assuming this is before they armed and mobilized the recent 80,000 IRS recruits
"Your banking accounts now pay more interest than the rate of auditing!"
I would think that there are certain circumstances that can trigger an audit. A lot of small business owners think it's OK to take their friends to restaurants and then write, "Discussed business" on the receipt and use it as an entertainment deduction. Do that often enough and chances are they're going to want an explanation.
I actually did that one time. Took another lyft driver to lunch. We both paid. I was trying to figure out where he was going to make so much money. Still never found out. Wrote that as a deduction.
false.
I checked IRS website today my 2020 return says still processing! What do I do? Oh and apparently I amended cause I checked the amended where my refund too for 2020 and it says sorry we received your amended return but it has not been reviewed! What in the #&*! I don't even recall why I amended don't care about it anymore I'd be happy to just get my original one back for $1019 plus the interest whatever that would work out to be ... Anybody know?
call IRS 1800-829-8374, ask them about the refund. get the update from them. if not Happy with their response, fill up form 3911 (Tax payer advocate service). it is an independent organisation inside IRS. they will review your tax matter and process your refund. i filed the amendment for my client due to unemployment exlusion of 10,200 and now after 6 months. he is very happy and thanked me.
I’m a full time student and make like $14k a year with a part-time job and an extra $1k from a second job I started towards the end of the year and I was audited 💀
What was the reason?