How Do I Beat IRS Examinations at Its Own Game? So here are some of the tactics that we used when dealing with IRS examinations in order to get the best results for our clients and I'm not necessarily recommending as a layperson that you try and effectuate these strategies by yourself I'm simply letting you know because I want you to see the playing field in terms of how IRS audits actually work and some of the tactical maneuvers that we use to get the best results for our clients again with an IRS audits particularly a field audit you want to make sure that you're handling the situation with an appropriate amount of deference and usually with field audits you want to get an attorney involved as quickly as possible however here's the way that we handle the situation number one when dealing with an examination issue we're trying to be at least a step ahead of the auditor so we're creating a very defined path and we're trying to lead the auditor down the path that we want to detect so what this takes is it takes two things number one you need a clear indication on where you're starting at a point that on so number one what are the facts what documents do I have available to me how are my documents going to line up in accordance with the auditors expectations why is the client being audited what information can I gather about my current situation based on the information I have about my current situation what are the likely outcomes when I get to the end am I gonna pay a tax I know how much tax.

I look at are there criminal issues are there willfulness issues or their negligence issues how much am I looking at penalties who's the auditor is the auditor pleasant to deal with from the conversation is the auditor not pleasant to deal with how much of my time is this going to take how much how much documents are made up reduce am I gonna have to submit the client for a summons interview so on and so forth so you want to gather all this information out you want to get yourself in a clear possession and then you want to understand what the next step is going to be and what your exposure is then based on these two points you want to plot a path you want to kind of map out the audit so you're gonna have sequences in the audit process that you're gonna go through and you're gonna for example have a meeting with the auditor and you're gonna present documents to the order so your presentation should match where you want the coal to be and then every step along the way should likewise match what you're trying to accomplish, so in some cases we're trying to not get disclosed information to the auditor so we'll do everything we can even at the risk of making our relationship a little bit difficult with the auditor we will not tell the auditor everything about a particular course of action because you'll never discover it client will walk into a big problem one of the other things that we utilize is what we call a Trojan horse so if we realize that the clients going to get caught in a certain area then we can use that will offer that to the auditor so they've made an adjustment and in James will focus the attention of the auditor on that particular area and move them around another issue so the other thing that we do is we've leveraged our relationship with IRS appeals.

So there are different ways to handle the office to be cooperative you can be not cooperative generally speaking it's better to win more flies with honey but at the same point sometimes you got to be a little tough with the auditor but you have the appeals division you have the ability to file a tax or petition you have the ability to speak with the manager in the territory manager and you have all these different avenues that you can pursue in order to get the best result your end goal may not be through the audit division you may get your end goal through Appeals and in which case your best move may be to get out of the audit as quickly as possible and correct everything once it's gone to Appeals it's a factual decision it's based on strategy and it's based on trying to navigate through the process but that's the easiest way of moving along and that's how you beat examination you have the power in an audit it seems like the auditors in control but they're not you control the moves you make a move the order has to mean they're constantly reacting and they're constantly responding to your moves so that's really how you beat examination okay and again I recommend that you get an attorney involved for this if the strategy component of it is very very important in the context of an order but by doing some of these things and by treating this as a larger problem not just step by step by step you're going to be more likely to achieve the result that you're looking for at the end of the autumn Up next.