With the holidays approaching, it’s a good time to take stock and consider your taxes and financial life – and take time to correct the mistakes.
By Steven N. Klitzner
Halloween just passed, and Thanksgiving is just a few weeks away.
That means the year is almost over, and with it another tax year.
You’ve been here before, many times actually. We all have. But now is the time – this is the year – to start thinking long and hard about whether it’s time to clean up your taxes.
Do you owe a substantial amount of taxes to the Internal Revenue Service?
Are you worried about being caught having cheated on your previous years’ taxes?
Are you nervous the knock at the door will be an IRS agent asking questions about that illegal tax shelter your friend said was safe?
Those are all good reasons, in any year, to want to come clean with the IRS. But those are very good reasons in a year like this one, when the IRS has proven to be a very efficient, and a very motivated, tax collector.
Think about it now. Think about how any organization would work. The economy is struggling, and so taxes are down. Yet the government still needs money to operate. That means IRS collections are that much more important to the government – and that much more likely to be aggressive.
No, this isn’t conjecture. It’s fact, borne out by numbers.
The IRS has doubled the number of liens it has filed since the start of the Great Recession. High-income earners face even greater scrutiny today from the IRS, with two of every 10 being audited last year.
Overall, one in every 100 Americans received an audit from the IRS.
Ouch, right?
But all of this is logical, and if you’re cheating on your taxes and not worried every night you go to bed about being caught, then you’re simply not paying attention.
This should serve as your warning.
Every week, the IRS and the Department of Justice announce new indictments against Americans who are cheating on their taxes.
In Tennessee, for example, a veterinarian faces three years in prison after failing to report $1.9 million in revenue he received from an online business specializing in natural holistic veterinary products.
Farther north, in Massachusetts, an ophthalmologist will spend a year in prison after he failed to pay hundreds of thousands in taxes and obstructed an IRS audit.
In Rhode Island, a jewelry store owner could get three years in prison for underreporting business income.
All three could have been your neighbors. Now all three are looking at hard time.
Actually, keep this in mind as you think about your taxes:
Any of the three could have been you.
Steven N. Klitzner is a Certified Tax Resolution Specialist, a member of the American Society of IRS Problem Solvers, and an Aventura attorney. You can contact him at 305-682-1118 to obtain a free subscription to his newsletter titled The IRS Times & Inquirer.
