If You Are Audited by the IRS Can You Just Pay Them What You Owe and Get Them Out of Your Life? No it doesn't really work like that if you're selected for audit by the IRS then they want to do an investigation to some varying degree into what the information that you've reported on your tax return not complying with that investigation we're trying to obstruct it in any way by not responding to the auditor or doing any number of things to impede their investigation we're just calling them up and send us a send me a bill is it really a good strategy number one if you call the auditor up and tell them to send you a bill and they're gonna disallow everything that they could possibly disallow and send you the largest tax bill that they can in order to protect the interest of the government. It's not like you're just gonna say well we're gonna limit it to this issue they're going to disallow everything because they don't have any basis or any support so by doing that you're cruising for a much higher liability and you're probably entitled to number two is if you have a complicated issue or if there's something that the IRS feels that there's really there for example if you don't report 30 40 grand on a tax return for income then yeah the IRS isn't just gonna let it go there are penalties involved with the unreported income there are penalties involved with overstating deductions and the IRS is gonna that's going to say oh well if we catch you just go ahead and mail some check and everything will be fine no. The IRS is about compliance if you don't comply with the tax laws but filing returns that are inaccurate or if you're overstating things or understanding things the IRS is going to punish you so it's not something that's it's just as simple as writing a check and being done with it you have to really you have to play the ball with the audit whether you want to or not.