Field Audit

When the IRS personally comes to our home or business to inspect our records and make sure we’re not filing shady tax returns. This is an intense version of the more-common correspondence audit, which takes place by mail and doesn’t involve an IRS agent showing up on our doorstep. (They’ll mail us a letter first, FYI. They don’t show up totally unannounced.)

Sometimes, the IRS inspector might even go to the office of whomever filed our tax return and rifle through their stuff, too. They’re looking for anything that might point to fraudulent or phony tax claims: assets we said we have but don’t actually have, assets we said we don’t have but actually do, iffy business accounting processes, questionable deductions on our returns, etc.

If this whole process sounds like loads of fun, we’re sure it can be. For some. Maybe. But for many, this can be a really intrusive and inconvenient ordeal. Happily, if this happens to us, we can hire a tax attorney to help us out and make sure everything is on the up-and-up. And if we disagree with whatever the field audit’s conclusions are, we have the right to dispute the findings.