Don't Fear the Auditor

Editor's note: As a special feature for March, TheStreet.com offers an ongoing series on everything you need to know about taxes. Today is part eight.

Anyone who has attended a dinner party or watched late-night talk shows during tax season has heard people joke about being audited. Everyone laughs politely, not because there's anything inherently amusing about tax fraud but because humor is an outlet through which a society contends with its anxieties.

The good news is that individual taxpayers do not get audited as commonly as it is assumed, and, except in extraordinary situations, the audit is nothing more than a calculation error, a forgotten signature or innocent confusion about complex tax regulations. ...