Avoiding an Income Tax Audit if you are a Small Business
There's something about just sitting down with an IRS income tax auditor that can get to even the most self-composed and mature men. The bad news is, if you are self-employed, and your way of filing your tax return is to innocently do it with a Schedule C, you are already on the IRS shortlist for an income tax audit. What did you do to deserve that? It's just that you've been personality-profiled - they figure that anyone who runs a business, is bound to try to disguise personal expenses as business ones, and claim deductions on them. They typically earmark 50% more auditors to audit firms and the self-employed pool, than they do for the salaried W-2 pool. But there is still a lot you can do, to keep out of their sights.
The first thing you do, is to use a top-notch accounting system on the computer. Better still, would be if you had your taxes prepared by not someone in-house, but by a professional accounting firm. And whatever you use, you can run your personal expenses through it too. The first thing that happens when you sit down to an income tax audit is, the IRS agent looks through all the deposits on your back accounts, both business and personal. If they find more money in your bank accounts then you have documentation for to prove where they came from, you'll have a bit of explaining to do.
And the flip side of that is, that if you do your own taxes, while skipping the professionals and professional grade software, the IRS feels that you're probably not going to have done a good job, being an amateur at this and all, and will bring you in for an income tax audit. Did you know that the tax code runs to more than 10,000 pages? Their assumption that you probably couldn't possibly have all that under your belt, is a reasonable one. If you are just worried about how professional CPA might charge you big bucks, consider how an income tax audit costs you big bucks too.
There is a pattern here, if you would care to see it. They feel that the more homey and personal your business structure is, the more under suspicion you naturally are under. If you happen to be a company, you're right away all more believable in the eyes of the IRS, and have less problems with an income tax audit. You could actually consider upgrading your business to something more businesslike - turn yourself into an incorporated partnership or something. But more important than any of these image problems you might have of not using the right software or looking like a "real" business, is the way you file your returns.
The rule for whether or not a deduction is reasonable, is to ask yourself if you would have made the expense in question, if you did not have a business. Some kinds of expenses, draw a lot more scrutiny. Car expenses, come number one on their list. They expect you to keep a detailed log of how many miles you traveled for worthy business purposes. Right through the year. Basically, the income tax audit people expect you to pull a fast one using your business vehicle for private purposes. The more records you have in this area, the better.
If you claim to work from home, telecommuting, as they call it, you'll probably want to charge for rent from your business for providing a home space for it. This is something that the auditor will really like to pick apart. Be sure you have detailed records of how long you work from your home office every day, to make sure that they really believe you.