Millionaires beware: More IRS audits for you
All you millionaires reading WalletPop are now put on notice: You're far more likely than me to be audited by the Internal Revenue Service. Who knew? Well, truthfully, we all probably expected that the IRS audited the wealthy much more often. It just makes sense... the more money there is to audit, the more money there is to squeeze out of the taxpayer. And the IRS has never been about collecting less money from us, the last time I checked.
So the IRS is offering up these odds of being audited... If your income is over a million dollars a year, you have a 1 in 11 chance of being audited. If your income is $100,000 or less per year, you have a 1 in 100 chance of being audited. And for those of you with incomes in between, your chances are in between also.
Lucky for us, audit rates are up across the board. The IRS audited almost 1.4 million tax returns in fiscal 2007, which was about 1% of total individual tax returns. And if you're one of the unlucky who are selected to be audited, you can find a few tips for getting through the trauma successfully on my corporate site.
More on Taxes
Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.
