The Importance Of Hiring Tax Consultants When Preparing A Sales Tax Audit Defense
In order to fuel the country's growth as well as allow the government to provide excellent services to the people, imposing taxes is very important. With this, the Internal Revenue System has placed strict measures in order to guarantee that individuals and businesses pay what is properly due them. Indeed, the IRS conduct tax audits regularly so as to curb fraud using special programs to monitor various red flags, most especially from businesses. These red flags will include unreported or fluctuating incomes and numerous deductions, as well as improperly filed returns.
In some circumstances, firms actually choose a voluntary disclosure if they realize that they have historical tax liabilities. Rather than waiting for a tax audit, they take the proactive approach, which in turn can allow them to limit both the look back period and taxes dues, and lessen penalties and interests. You must remember that if the IRS sends notice of a sales tax audit, a business has actually 2 ways of responding. First is to just go with the flow and let the auditors do their job. Second option is for you to take a proactive stance by enlisting the help of a tax consultant for its sales tax audit defense.
For the first option, lots of business owners may find themselves at a disadvantage because of the several years of experience of the auditors. Furthermore, going through the auditing process without the help of a professional can hinder business operations and consume plenty of your time. For state auditors, their primary goal is to add revenue to the state coffers and his might mean that they will bring every trick out of the bag in order to meet their goal.
But if you opt for the second option, the very first thing a tax audit defense consultant will do is to conduct a pre-audit risk assessment. As such, the consultant will look for common sales tax audit issues which can actually hurt your business. Among the most common sales tax audit tissues are uncollected sales tax on taxable sales as well as unpaid tax on taxable purchase. In fact, missing resale or perhaps exemption certificates for sales transactions, failure to recognize that the business is bound by the state in terms of taxing sales, or simply outdated tax rules are the common reasons for uncollected tax liabilities.
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