If the FTB has elected to audit your tax returns you should be exceptionally wary, and employ the experienced tax attorneys at Allen Barron to protect your interests and minimize potential liability and exposure. The fact is, once you’ve been audited by the FTB (and in many cases the IRS) you can count on subsequent audits for the next 3 years. In many cases the real goal is “Scope Creep.” They want to expand the focus of the inquiry to allow them to increase the number of things they are looking into and go into previous years to examine like issues. Scope creep amounts to one thing for you: much greater cash exposure. The IRS, FTB and other California agencies are looking for revenues, and they employ tactics that are designed to engage well meaning taxpayers and business professionals in such a way as to provide opportunities to expand the inquiry and open previous years.
There are ways to limit the scope of an audit and to prevent tax agencies from using “scope creep” to dig deeper into your pockets. As a client of Allen Barron and Janathan L. Allen APC, we handle all communications with tax agencies on your behalf, and when they make a request designed to increase the scope of the audit or open previous years we can take a firm stance, communicate effectively and limit them to the this year, and the original questions under audit. This saves our clients substantial sums of money, as well as the emotional burden and distraction of dealing with an audit and representatives of tax agencies. If you have been contacted by the FTB, IRS or a tax authority for an audit, we invite you to call us immediately for a free consultation at 866-631-3470. We can offer the protections of attorney-client privilege and protect you from scope creep and future audits.