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18 Red Flags for IRS AuditorsBy Joy Taylor (/fronts/archive/bios/index.html?bylineID=162), Editor (//twitter.com/intent/follow?screen_name=@Kiplinger) | December 5, 2018

Ever wonder why some tax returns are eyeballed by the Internal Revenue Service while most are ignored? Short on personnel and funding, the IRS audited only 0.60% of all individual tax returns in 2017, and the vast majority of these exams were conducted by mail. So the odds are pretty low that your return will be singled out for review. And, of course, the only reason filers should worry about an audit is if they are fudging on their taxes.

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Page 1 of 24Red Flags for IRS Auditors

1/9/2019https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/taxes/T056-S001-red-flags-for-irs-auditors/index.html...

That said, your chances of being audited or otherwise hearing from the IRS escalate depending on various factors, including your income level, the types of deductions or other tax breaks you claim, the business you’re engaged in, and whether you own foreign assets. Math errors may draw IRS inquiry, but they’ll rarely lead to a full-blown exam. Although there’s no sure way to avoid an IRS audit, these 18 red flags could increase your chances of unwanted attention from the IRS.

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Red Flags for IRS Auditors

Making a Lot of Money

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The overall individual audit rate may only be about one in 167 returns, but the odds increase as your income goes up. IRS statistics for 2017 show that individuals with incomes between $200,000 and $1,000,000 and no Schedule C attached had a 0.8% audit rate. It’s 1.6% for Schedule C filers. Report $1 million or more of income? There’s a one-in-23 chance your return will be audited.

We’re not saying you should try to make less money — everyone wants to be a millionaire. Just understand that the more income shown on your return, the more likely it is that you’ll be hearing from the IRS.

SEE ALSO: Do You Have What It Takes to be a Millionaire (/quiz/investing/T052-S001-the-millionaire-quiz-do-you-have-what-it-takes/index.html)


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Failing to Report All Taxable Income

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The IRS gets copies of all the 1099s and W-2s you receive, so be sure you report all required income on your return. IRS computers are pretty good at matching the numbers on the forms with the income shown on your return. A mismatch sends up a red flag and causes the IRS computers to spit out a bill. If you receive a 1099 showing income that isn’t yours or listing incorrect income, get the issuer to file a correct form with the IRS.

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Taking Higher-than-Average Deductions

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If the deductions on your return are disproportionately large compared with your income, the IRS may pull your return for review. But if you have the proper documentation for your deduction, don’t be afraid to claim it. There’s no reason to ever pay the IRS more tax than you actually owe.

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Running a Business

Sure, some self-employed taxpayers get a big break under the new law(/article/taxes/T054-C000-S002-self-employed-taxpayers-get-break-under-new-law.html), and Schedule C is a treasure trove of tax deductions for self-employed

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people. But it’s also a gold mine for IRS agents, who know from experience that self-employed people sometimes claim excessive deductions and don’t report all their income. The IRS looks at both higher-grossing sole proprietorships and smaller ones. Sole proprietors reporting at least $100,000 of gross receipts on Schedule C and business owners who report a substantial loss have a higher audit risk.

Special scrutiny is also given to cash-intensive businesses (taxis, car washes, bars, hair salons, restaurants and the like) and people with freelance service gigs through the sharing economy (think of Uber, Rover, Grubhub). Pass-through firms such as S corporations, partnerships and limited liability companies face audit heat, too.

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Taking Large Charitable Deductions

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We all know that charitable contributions are a great write-off and help you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. However, if your charitable deductions are disproportionately large compared with your income, it raises a red flag.

That’s because the IRS knows what the average charitable donation is for folks at your income level. Also, if you don’t get an appraisal for donations of valuable property, or if you fail to file Form 8283 for noncash donations over $500, you become an even bigger audit target. And if you’ve donated a conservation or façade easement to a charity, chances are good that you’ll hear from the IRS. Be sure to keep all your supporting documents, including receipts for cash and property contributions made during the year.

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Claiming Rental Losses



Normally, the passive loss rules prevent the deduction of rental real estate losses. But there are two important exceptions. If you actively participate in the renting of your property, you can deduct up to $25,000 of loss against your other income. This $25,000 allowance phases out as adjusted gross income exceeds $100,000 and disappears entirely once your AGI reaches $150,000. A second exception applies to real estate professionals who spend more than 50% of their working hours and over 750 hours each year materially participating in real estate as developers, brokers, landlords or the like. They can write off rental losses.

The IRS actively scrutinizes rental real estate losses, especially those written off by taxpayers claiming to be real estate pros. It’s pulling returns of individuals who claim they are real estate professionals and whose W-2 forms or other non-real estate Schedule C businesses show lots of income. Agents are checking to see whether these filers worked the necessary hours, especially in cases of landlords whose day jobs are not in the real estate business.

SEE ALSO: Is a Rental Property the Best Way to Grow Your Wealth? (/article/investing/T010-C032-S014-is-rental-property-good-way-to-grow-your-wealth.html)

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Taking an Alimony Deduction

Alimony paid by cash or check is deductible by the payer and taxable to the recipient, provided certain requirements are met. For instance, the payments must be made under a divorce or separate maintenance decree or written separation agreement. The document can’t say the payment isn’t alimony. And the payer’s liability for the payments must end when the former spouse dies. You’d be surprised how many divorce decrees run afoul of this rule.

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Alimony doesn’t include child support or noncash property settlements. The rules on deducting alimony are complicated, and the IRS knows that some filers who claim this write-off don’t satisfy the requirements. It also wants to make sure that both the payer and the recipient properly reported alimony on their respective returns. A mismatch in reporting by ex-spouses will almost certainly trigger an audit.

Note that the tax rules on alimony are changing under the new tax law. Alimony paid under post-2018 divorce agreements will no longer be deductible (and ex-spouses won’t be taxed on alimony they receive under post-2018 divorce agreements).

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Writing Off a Loss for a Hobby

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Sorry to inform you, but you’re a prime audit target if you report multiple years of losses on Schedule C, run an activity that sounds like a hobby and have lots of income from other sources.

To be eligible to deduct a loss, you must be running the activity in a business-like manner and have a reasonable expectation of making a profit. If your activity generates profit three out of every five years (or two out of seven years for horse breeding), the law presumes that you’re in business to make a profit, unless the IRS establishes otherwise. Be sure to keep supporting documents for all expenses.

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Deducting Business Meals, Travel and Entertainment

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Big deductions for meals and travel taken on Schedule C by business owners are always ripe for audit. A large write-off will set off alarm bells, especially if the amount seems too high for the business.

Agents are on the lookout for personal meals or claims that don’t satisfy the strict substantiation rules. To qualify for meal deductions, you must keep detailed records that document for each expense the amount, place, people attending, business purpose, and nature of the discussion or meeting. Also, you must keep receipts for expenditures over $75 or for any expense for lodging while traveling away from home. Without proper documentation, your deduction is toast. It’s a sure bet that IRS examiners will also check that business owners aren’t deducting entertainment expenses such as golf fees or sports tickets for a client outing. The new tax law eliminated the deduction for entertainment expenses.

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Failing to Report a Foreign Bank Account



The IRS is intensely interested in people with money stashed outside the U.S., especially in countries with the reputation of being tax havens, and U.S. authorities have had lots of success getting foreign banks to disclose account information.

Failure to report a foreign bank account can lead to severe penalties. Make sure that if you have any such accounts, you properly report them. This means electronically filing FinCEN Report 114 (FBAR) (https://bsaefiling.fincen.treas.gov/main.html) by April 15 to report foreign accounts that combined total more than $10,000 at any time during the previous year. (Filers who miss the April 15 deadline get an automatic six-month extension to file the form.) Taxpayers with a lot more financial assets abroad may also have to attach IRS Form 8938 (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8938.pdf) to their timely filed tax returns.

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Claiming 100% Business Use of a Vehicle

When you depreciate a car, you have to list on Form 4562 the percentage of its use during the year that was for business. Claiming 100% business use of an automobile is red meat for IRS agents. They know that it’s rare for someone to actually use a vehicle 100% of the time for business, especially if no other vehicle is available for personal use.

The IRS also targets heavy SUVs and large trucks used for business, especially those bought late in the year. That’s because these vehicles are eligible for more favorable depreciation and expensing write-offs. Be sure you keep detailed mileage logs and precise calendar entries for the purpose of every road trip. Sloppy recordkeeping makes it easy for a revenue agent to disallow your deduction.

As a reminder, if you use the IRS’s standard mileage rate, you can’t also claim actual expenses for maintenance, insurance and the like. The IRS has seen such shenanigans and is on the lookout for more.

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Incorrectly Reporting the Health Premium Tax Credit

The premium tax credit helps individuals pay for health insurance they buy through the marketplace. It’s available for people with household incomes ranging from 100% to 400% of the federal poverty level. Individuals who are eligible for Medicare, Medicaid or other federal insurance do not qualify. Ditto for people who are able to get affordable health coverage through their employer.

The credit is estimated when you go on a marketplace website such as healthcare.gov to buy insurance (the estimated premium subsidy for 2019 will be based on your expected 2018 income). You can choose to have the credit paid in advance directly to the health

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insurance company in order to lower your monthly payments. You then have to attach IRS Form 8962 to your tax return to compute your actual credit, list any advance subsidy paid to the insurer and then reconcile the two figures.

The IRS is on the prowl for people who receive the advance subsidies and either don’t file returns or file returns but erroneously report the credit. Its computer systems are flagging returns of taxpayers who have modified adjusted gross incomes above the eligible limit to claim the break.

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Taking an Early Payout from an IRA or 401(k) Account

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The IRS wants to be sure that owners of traditional IRAs and participants in 401(k)s and other workplace retirement plans are properly reporting and paying tax on distributions. Special attention is being given to payouts before age 59½, which, unless an exception applies, are subject to a 10% penalty on top of the regular income tax. An IRS sampling found that nearly 40% of individuals scrutinized made errors on their income tax returns with respect to retirement payouts, with most of the mistakes coming from taxpayers who didn’t qualify for an exception to the 10% additional tax on early distributions. So the IRS will be looking at this issue closely.

The IRS has a chart (https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-participant-employee/retirement-topics-tax-on-early-distributions) listing withdrawals taken before the age of 59½ that escape the 10% penalty, such as payouts made to cover very large medical costs, total and permanent disability of the account owner, or a series of substantially equal payments that run for five years or until age 59½, whichever is later.

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Claiming Day-Trading Losses on Schedule C



People who trade in securities have significant tax advantages compared with investors. The expenses of traders are fully deductible and are reported on Schedule C (expenses of investors are nondeductible), and traders’ profits are exempt from self-employment tax. Losses of traders who make a special section 475(f) election are deductible and are treated as ordinary losses that aren’t subject to the $3,000 cap on capital losses. And there are other tax benefits.

But to qualify as a trader, you must buy and sell securities frequently and look to make money on short-term swings in prices. And the trading activities must be continuous. This is different from an investor, who profits mainly on long-term appreciation and dividends. Investors hold their securities for longer periods and sell much less often than traders.

The IRS knows that many filers who report trading losses or expenses on Schedule C are actually investors. So it’s pulling returns and checking to see that the taxpayer meets all of the rules to qualify as a bona fide trader.

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Operating a Marijuana Business

Marijuana businesses have an income tax problem. They’re prohibited from claiming business write-offs, other than for the cost of the weed, even in states where it is legal to sell, grow and use pot. That’s because a federal statute bars tax deductions for sellers of controlled substances that are illegal under federal law, such as marijuana.

The IRS is eyeing legal marijuana firms that take improper write-offs on their returns. Agents come in and disallow deductions on audit, and courts consistently side with the IRS on this issue.

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Failing to Report Gambling Winnings or Claiming Big Gambling Losses

Whether you’re playing the slots or betting on the horses, one sure thing you can count on is that Uncle Sam wants his cut. Recreational gamblers must report winnings as other income on the 1040 form. Professional gamblers show their winnings on Schedule C. Failure to report gambling winnings can draw IRS attention, especially if the casino or other venue reported the amounts on Form W-2G.

Claiming large gambling losses can also be risky. You can deduct these only to the extent that you report gambling winnings (and recreational gamblers must also itemize). The IRS is looking at returns of filers who report large losses on Schedule A from

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recreational gambling, but aren’t including the winnings in income. Also, taxpayers who report large losses from their gambling-related activity on Schedule C get extra scrutiny from IRS examiners, who want to make sure these folks really are gaming for a living.

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Engaging in Currency Transactions

The IRS gets many reports of cash transactions in excess of $10,000 involving banks, casinos, car dealers and other businesses, plus suspicious-activity reports from banks and disclosures of foreign accounts. So if you make large cash purchases or deposits, be prepared for IRS scrutiny. Also, be aware that banks and other institutions file

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reports on suspicious activities that appear to avoid the currency transaction rules (such as a person depositing $9,500 in cash one day and an additional $9,500 in cash two days later).

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Claiming the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion

U.S. citizens who work overseas can exclude on 2018 returns up to $102,100 of their income earned abroad if they were bona fide residents of another country for the entire year or they were outside of the U.S. for at least 330 complete days in a 12-month span.

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Additionally, the taxpayer must have a tax home in the foreign country. The tax break doesn’t apply to amounts paid by the U.S. or one of its agencies to its employees who work abroad.

IRS agents actively sniff out people who are erroneously taking this break, and the issue keeps coming up in disputes before the Tax Court. Among the areas of IRS focus: Filers with minimal ties to the foreign country they work in and who keep an abode in the U.S. (note that the U.S. abode restriction doesn’t apply to individual taxpayers who work in combat zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan). Flight attendants and pilots. Plus employees of U.S. government agencies who mistakenly claim the exclusion when they are working overseas.

SEE ALSO: The Most Tax-Friendly States in the U.S. 2018 (/slideshow/taxes/T006-S001-10-tax-friendly-states/index.html)


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