Top Five (5) to a Successful IRS Audit Experience

Top Five (5) to a Successful IRS Audit Experience

If you have just received a tax notice these tax tips will do much to ensure that you stay out of trouble with the IRS as well as mitigate it, once it occurs and will be one you will want to refer to again and again. These are the most common mistakes business owners and taxpayers make resulting in much extra stress and additional penalties and interest that can be legally avoided.

1. Not Use a CPA to prepare your original business return. Doing your return on your own, with only a box to ask for answers to your most strategic tax questions is a recipe for financial calamity. Not knowing when to be an S Corporation, LLC, LLP, C Corporation or will do much to increase your tax bill from the offset. Furthermore not knowing what a qualified plan is, much less which one is best for you and your business will do much to impair your ability to limit both your current tax bill and to plan for your long-term retirement.

2. Not retain a CPA to represent you before the IRS. If you have already done your personal or business return and now have received an IRS notice and are thinking you can represent yourself, you are about to make a bad situation worse. Not only did you do your own return and potentially file the return with many errors in tow, now you are thinking about representing yourself before the IRS and an IRS agent who is well-trained and versed in an area you are not; tax law. If doing your own return is akin to not taking care of yourself, resulting in your getting sick. Then handling your own surgery would be similar to performing your own surgery to help you get well.

3. Believe that a Tax Preparation or Bookkeeping Service has the same credentials. To become a CPA today in most states you need a five year BBA in Accounting. To pass a four part exam and to have two years of experience of working under the tutelage of a CPA as their direct supervisor. To remain a CPA most states also require both Peer Review and ongoing continuing education or CPA. As a CPA of over three decades of experience, I have worked in the industry for thirty years, 10,950 days, or 262,800 hours. On the other hand to be a tax preparer requires only a business license only, and they might have only just started.

4. Go to the IRS Audit Meeting. It is best when we do not add negative information to an already difficult information. As most all taxpayers are not CPA's and do not know tax law, your opinion, like mine, would not enlighten or assist during the performance of an IRS audit. Only Tax Law Matters and Your CPA Knows Tax Law. Work only with a CPA who has a proven and documentable track record of success in handling tax representation issues, penalty abatement and Offers in Compromise. Just as Jesus is our Intercessor before God so will should we want a CPA as an intercessor with the Internal Revenue Service.

5. CPA: Never Underestimate the Value. A CPA is an Tax Advocate who can help you:

-Legally Avoid Taxes by Paying Your Lowest Legal Possible Tax
-Make Timely Tax Elections
-Make Proper Tax Choices
-File Corporate and Personal Income Tax Returns on a Timely Basis
-Keep you Abreast of Tax Law
-Stay out of Trouble
-Plan for Retirement
-Serve as a Part-Time Virtual CFO/Controller

To read more about John Dillard CPA and his CPA practice, business consulting and IRS representation visit http://www.hiscpa.com/

To read about his books A Voice of One, Overcoming Life's 9/11's and Charleston Dawn and his speaking ministry visit http://www.john-dillard.com /