One of my clients angrily sent me a message today. She received an IRS Automated Underreporting Unit (AUR) notice alleging that she did not include $50,000 of W-2Gs on her 2015 tax return. She’s a professional gambler, so I looked at her Schedule C and shockingly (not) there was the $50,000 of W-2Gs included in her gross receipts. Attached to the return was a schedule helpfully breaking this out for the IRS (she also received a 1099-MISC that was included in her gambling gross receipts).
The IRS AUR program is a huge (or should I say “bigly”) money maker for the agency. People blindly pay these notices; after all, if the IRS sends it out it must be right? Well, the last survey I saw showed that two-thirds of IRS notices are wrong in whole or in part. AUR notices are not screened before being sent out. The recipient is literally the first person to have read it.
Do not assume an IRS notice is correct. Most are not. If you blindly pay it, you have agreed to the tax. Had a human taken two minutes to read the return, they would have seen the income and the breakout schedule and the notice would have never been sent. But that simply doesn’t happen with the AUR program.
Additionally, you have a limited amount of time to respond to the notice (typically 30 days). Make sure you timely respond, and if you mail your response send it certified mail, return receipt requested. You want proof your response got there. Be prepared to wait many weeks for the IRS to send you a reply to what you’ve written; the average IRS time to respond to correspondence is now 14 weeks.
My client now understands this issue, and I provided her a pdf of the Schedule C and supporting documents to show that no tax is owed. If you get an AUR notice, make sure you carefully review it and then respond. While blindly paying an IRS notice did not make my Bozo Tax Tips for this Tax Season, I’m definitely considering it for the future.
Tags: AUR