Five Audit Attractors to Watch Out For

Lifestyle
Lifestyle audits are supposedly a thing of the past. But come on, you know that lifestyle comes into play. I mean, if you are living in a Beverly Hills mansion, with mortgage interest of $200,000 per year, paying DMV fees on a Ferrari, and making charitable contributions of $50,000 each year, then your tax return had better show more than $36,000 of wages from Oil Changers, right? These incongruities will flag your tax return for audit.

Industry
Specific industry audits are a continuing IRS project. Every year the IRS selects a particular industry to audit. In recent history it has selected wage earners with a small Schedule C business (looking to blow hobby losses out of the water), attorneys incorporated as S corporations (looking at unreasonable compensation in order to add payroll tax liabilities), and trusts with offshore holdings (looking for tax fraud and unreported income).