What type of penalties can I face a nun hire us audit? So the penalty structure and an audit is really rangy and it can range anywhere from a five percent penalty all the way up to a seventy five percent penalty depends on the conduct and the course of dealing during the audit and how the material is presented. The most common penalty is the negligence penalty which is about 20 percent if at all possible you want to avoid that negligence penalty and knock this thing down to an accuracy penalty which is about 10 percent an accuracy penalty is usually the best case scenario because the accuracy penalty is mandatory for adjustments that are 5 grand or more in tax generally speaking with most our clients although we try and get them out with flying colors there's usually some reason that the IRS is audited another return so a $5,000 adjustment is usually not out of the ordinary however we'll do everything that we can during the course of the audit to mitigate any penalties for more serious cases the goal in the audit is to mitigate the civil fraud penalty which is a 75% penalty in addition to the 75% penalty on top of the tax that you owe civil fraud prevents certain resolutions within IRS collections that's why it's really important to avoid the stigma of fraud going forward in your IRS matter.

In the event that a civil fraud penalty is issued the most likely course of action is an IRS appeals but as you've seen here the penalties can really range in value and so one of the important things to think about when you're hiring a representative when you're making the decision on who to represent you in the audit is how you're going to deal with the issue of penalties and mitigate them as much as possible you.