BEING AUDITED
Even if your return has no errors and appears to you to
be a simple return, the government, usually the IRS, may select it for a random
audit.
If that is the case, you have two
choices:
1) You can handle the audit yourself. Now you are
putting yourself up against the expert, whose job it is to collect more taxes
from you. In this case he is not your friend but rather your
adversary. That's like stepping into a boxing ring with a professional
boxer and hoping for a "lucky punch."
2) Have someone who knows what they are doing handle
the audit for you. This is something like saying, "Do I want to pull my own
tooth, or do I go to a Dentist?" Pulling teeth and being audited are
both painful experiences that we would all like to avoid. However, they both
happen, even to good people. We can’t help you with your tooth pulling (although
I will get you some string if you really want to do it yourself), but we can
help you with that audit. As Enrolled Agents, we speak
the same language as the auditor, so we know what he can do and say, and what
the law says that he can not.
Regardless of whether we prepared the return, you
had someone else prepare it, or you prepared the return yourself, we will sit
down and review the letter from the IRS.
We will carefully examine the audit letter, and then apply the IRS
statements to the tax return in question. If we see there is an actual
error*, we can then advise our clients as to what can be done.
The Accounting Office stands behind every return that
we prepare, and will always assist our clients in defending their position to
the IRS. We are here at the same
location all year, and and are available to assist all tax payers.
*In this case, the word "error" refers to monetary figures, data, or omissions that were incorrectly entered into the tax return, either intentionally or unintentionally, by the person being audited. It's important to understand that a professionally prepared tax return is only as accurate as the materials supplied by the client.