13,000 lucky Americans will soon receive letters from the IRS explaining that they've been selected for a random audit. The hapless participants are rounded up as part of the IRS' National Research Program, which seeks to explain why the Treasury receives $300 billion less than we Americans collectively owe. A random audit is nothing to fear, unless you are a tax cheating yutz.
Not that I don't completely trust the IRS with my life... but just how random will this be?
Would be interesting to see how many rich/poor, bloggers/mouthbreathers, Republicans/Democrats come up on the random choices.
4 comments:
It will be completely random. Diebold is building the randomizer....
I feel so ... safe now.
IRS audited my 2004 return, proclaiming in 2006 that I had under-reported by a huge amount in 2004, and owed them many, many thousands of dollars, plus penalties.
My quick review made it obvious what had happened: I have (actually, had) two businesses, and they had simply failed to count the income I reported from the larger business. It was eventually straightened out... after I hired my tax accountant to write to them.
Note that this was one hundred percent an IRS error, not a matter of interpretation... but I ended up shelling out some bucks to my accountant to get it corrected.
IIRC, there is evidence that, from the Gingrich era forward, IRS has emphasized auditing returns for lower-income taxpayers. Yeah, that'll fix the problem of under-collection.
Exactly. Penny pinching in the weirdest way while ignoring HUGE mysterious gaps in the tax filings of very wealthy people... I wonder why that is...
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