How Does the IRS Select People for Audit? So the IRS has been processing tax returns and auditing people for a very very long time it's very good at auditing people and understanding that the government has limited resources it really focuses on the areas where it thinks it can get the biggest wind biggest wind translates to how much additional tax revenue can we raise through examination so the IRS has developed a statistical body of data points and depending on the relationship that your return has to those data points dictates how likely you are to get audited so what happens is a taxpayer will file a tax return and that tax return will get scored by two methods that the IRS uses to score returns one it's called the day of to score and one is called a UI disk or just diff stands for discriminate income function so what the IRS is looking for when it scores returns based on a disk score if the IRS is looking at the pretence atif or error in the taxpayers return so for example if it sees expenses that are being taken that are not in line with you through the profession or not in line with the level of income that's on the return or a couple of other factors then that return will generally receive a high def score and be subject to audit a high disk or translates to we think, this return of a higher propensity for air when they do a UI def score they're looking at the propensity the return has high levels of unreported income so the IRS uses those two scores they select people based on where they fall within a data pool and then they kind of go from there determining who gets audited eventually this is an all computer-based eventually this gets to a manual reviewer and there's a human being who looks through this and makes you see but the IRS uses statistics as much as possible to get a pool of returns that feels are appropriate for Aude it and then it selects the quote-unquote low-hanging fruit the ones that it thinks they can get the most adjustments out.