It depends. There's rules about the minimum payment you need to make to avoid
penalties and interest. If what you pay each year equals at least 100% of your
previous year's tax due or 90% of the current year's, they usually won't go
after you unless they're pretty sure they can dig up enough to put you into the
penalties range again. If you're filing Schedule C or other more unusual forms,
or you've got a lot of non-standard credits and deductions that you don't have
solid paperwork on, they may give it a go. But if you've got a relatively
straightforward return with little chance they'll be able to get penalties out
of you even if the audit succeeds, they normally won't waste their time. And
even if you've got an exotic return, if you've been audited several times before
and they've come up with nothing there's a good chance your file's been
internally flagged "not worth the hassle". They're judged on recoveries, and
they want to avoid spending time and effort on audits that won't yield any
recovery unless there's absolutely nothing juicier in their In box. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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