rs-illinois-state-audits

Well it depends, but not usually. First of all, the mistake that a lot of taxpayers make is they think that they can handle the audit because they think either a they’re smarter than the auditor or the errors on the return aren’t really that severe. The problem with that is a taxpayer who goes into a situation with an auditor, unless that taxpayer is a tax attorney or a CPA, is probably not going to have the same level of knowledge about how audits work as the auditor. So even if the taxpayer is familiar with the law, the taxpayer is generally not familiar with the way that audits work and the procedure with that and so the risk is that even if the tax loss is minimal, the taxpayer could potentially put themselves into a damaging situation. So for example, if you’re not really used to changing tires and you get a flat tire on the road, yes you could change the tire yourself. There is the possibility that you’ll do a reasonably good job and change the tire and then everything will be okay, but there’s also the possibility that you might make a mistake. If you believe that there is a mistake on your return and if that mistake is significant, meaning it’s over five thousand dollars in tax back to the government, then you may want to consider hiring a representative to help you because once you get into a situation where there’s an audit and their adjustments are being made, then the penalty conversation comes into play and so the more adjustments that are made on the return, the more it increases

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So your CPA maybe the best CPA in the world and this conversation is not to suggest it anything negative about CPAs whom we work with all the time, who are a huge asset to our practice and I don’t think any of the CPAs that we work with would have any problem with me saying this. The CPAs generally are not good in audits and they’re not good because they don’t do a lot of audits. From a CPA perspective, a CPA is compliance based. CPAs are focused most of the time on preparing returns and preparing them accurately. They have a whole living based on being a CPA which is a certified public accountant. A certified public accountant is an individual who is certified to prepare financial statements so the reality of the situation is when a CPA is charged with compliance, and if there is any doubt as to that compliance meaning, there are errors on the tax return the CPA prepared, then there’s a natural conflict of interest because either

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