April 8, 2007 10:30 PM
Tax Advice: How to Avoid Getting Audited
IRS audits for high income households are on the rise, and WSJ's Tom Herman has some advices for us. To be honest, producing accurate tax returns is a growing pain now. My last year's tax return adds up to 45 pages, and I couldn't do it without professional help.
From http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117589697192162590.html:
Pressured by Congress to collect more money, the Internal Revenue Service has been busy boosting its audits, particularly among high-income earners. It's forcing taxpayers to be increasingly vigilant in order to avoid waving red flags in front of the tax man.
Audits of taxpayers with income of $100,000 or more rose 18% to about 258,000 last year from a year earlier, the highest level in more than a decade, and audits of people with income of $1 million and higher jumped 33%.
...
The IRS is also improving its weaponry for seeking out targets. It recently updated its top-secret computerized scoring systems that help it target which returns are ripe for an audit.
Tax officials are careful not to divulge their formulas. But they say that trouble is most widespread among people whose income isn't reported separately to the IRS, or who deal in large amounts of cash.
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