r/tax•
bigoaktrees

Early warning alert of a future IRS audit

Informative

This older thread mentions an "audit early warning" service. It was quickly snubbed as a scam. Must all such services be scams?

This same type of service is offered by an apparently reputable tax firm run by EA Clinton Donnelly. He explains in a video how they do it, at 1 minute in. Apparently they access the taxpayer's transcript on the IRS site and notice activity that happens within the lifecycle of the tax returns. A screenshot at 2:12 shows an "Examination of tax return" item, that occurred 9 months before the taxpayer received the audit letter.

They do claim the account information is "unique information that we pull for our clients". I know that any taxpayer can get their transcripts for free, but they don't look like in that screenshot. Might that be a proprietary interface at Donnelly Law (or even a spreadsheet) that someone enters manually after pulling the transcripts as any taxpayer would, or are tax firms able to access more of the taxpayer's information IRS, given authorization?

Is an "audit early warning" service possible, after all? How would it work?

Posted Nov 16, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

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