Can you explain how a check made out to your local tax collector for prop taxes, with an amount matching your prop tax statement, with that check showing as cleared on a checking account statement can be disallowed..?
Likewise, can you explain how a home interest deduction on 12 checks amounting to 12 mortgage payments of equal amounts (for a year, of course) and an amortization table and a copy of your mortgage note could possibly result in a disallowance of your deduction for home mort interest?
I mean, these are (at least to my way of thinking) 100% unassailable proofs of having spent those monies on those things.
I take it you've had a rotten experience and I sympathize. I was audited by the CA State Bd of Equalization (for sales tax collection) in, IIRC, 1986. As I was selling expensive equipment at the time, my quarterly sales tax collections ran to $9K-$11K a quarter at the time. The auditor actually tried to solicit me for a bribe, I called the State Attorney general who was incredibly interested and two agents showed up on my doorstep 45 minutes after my call(!) They ultimately set up a sting, including hidden camera and mic, giving me marked $100 bills to pay him, and they arrested the guy standing in line at the Bank of America with $1500 in hundred dollar bills and a deposit slip to his account, LOL. Of course, I then had to go through the whole audit process again from the beginning.
I appreciate the IRS is different, they are in effect a meta-governmental agency in terms of unbridled power and can and will make your life miserable should they choose to do so.
I think the intimation was that the IRS will issue a cryptic demand letter where the amount due is less than the cost in time and money to defend your position.
Even if your deduction is 100% verifiable, it is cheaper to give the IRS another $200 than it is to fight it. It would cost more than that in lost wages, even if you didn’t feel the need to hire a CPA to accompany you.
Can you explain how your wife and 2 kids are allowed as deductions on joint returns in years 1,2,4,5,6,etc. But not in year 3 with no attempt by the IRS to claim anything ... just not allow them ... and with no audit?
Can you explain how you have a job in which you put 100,000 miles on your car in a year for business and are allowed to deduct that expense in years 1,2,4,etc but not year 3... with no audit?
Can you explain how you gross 14,900 in a year and request 800 of the 2,000 withheld back as a refund in April and the IRS in Nov of the same year says you owe over $7,000 for that year you grossed 14,900 with the IRS not disputing the amount of gross pay ... and with no audit?
Can you explain how the IRS can remove that $7,000 from your sister’s bank account with no advance warning to either you or your sister with the after-the-fact explanation that the person grossing 14,900 was “hiding” money in the sister’s bank account?
Can you explain how a person is guilty til proven innocent?
Can you explain how a conservative congressman and ranking majority member of the committee that controls the IRS assumes that the IRS never makes a mistake and is always right?
Can you explain how the #1 constituent service requested and not received of that conservative congressman was problems with the IRS where the taxpayer claimed the IRS was wrong ... and not once did the conservative congressman or his staff take the side of the taxpayer?
Can you explain why that conservative congressman lost re-election in a safe conservative Republican district?