Will I Go to Jail As the Result of Getting Audited by the IRS? So know if you make a mistake on your tax return government isn't gonna put you in jail but if you make a big mistake on your tax return and it was accompanied by the willful knowledge that you intended to make that mistake if you said I'm just not gonna report any income or I'm gonna try and conceal income so I don't have to pay taxes ie I'm going to evade taxes or if you deliberately file a tax return that's false or engage in any of the tax penalties yeah you can go to jail for that the auditor is not going to be. The one that put you it puts you in jail but what happens is with civil audits it's civil audits are a great referral source for the criminal division of the IRS so a lot of times what will happen is the government will engagements and they call it a parallel investigation they'll have a civil auditor who's conducting a civil audit the auditor will find something will find some bad behavior and they will report it to.

The criminal division and then what will happen is usually before they report to the criminal division the civil auditor is using the civil audit as a fact-finding mission to gather more information to give over to the criminal authorities so I would hope that if you get audited and you know that there's a serious error at your return that you're engaging with an attorney immediately to step in you that's probably the most important part but yes you can go to jail for deliberate mistakes on your taxes can go to jail for trying to evade taxes we're filing a false tax returns probably one of the most important things is you should not make false statements to an auditor so again one of the reasons you get an attorney involved is to minimize your own contact with the civil auditor because if the civil auditor asks you a question and you lie about it they can use that against you later you know the old saying you have the right to remain silent and anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law you should treat the civil auditors that way you're talking to a government agent that government agent is conducting an investigation into you don't say anything that will be damaging to you later so if you're in a situation where willfulness is even an issue you definitely need to consult with an attorney as soon as possible to help you deal with the situation.