Building IRS Audit Defense Strategy | International Tax Lawyer & Attorney San Antonio

Hello and welcome to Sherayzen Video Blog. My name is Eugene Sherayzen and I’m an international tax attorney and owner of Sherayzen Law Office, Ltd.

Today, I’m continuing a series of blogs from San Antonio, Texas. This series of blogs is pretty much devoted to IRS audits, specifically IRS audits of foreign assets and foreign income.

In this blog, I would like to discuss an issue that should concern you in every IRS audit. How should your defense be structured? Of course, I’m not going to be talking about the details of that strategy; that’s impossible because every strategy has to be based on facts of that particular case. It has to be adapted to the particulars of each case; I’m just talking about what the general plan would be and how you choose your strategy.

There are three most important points when choosing a plan of defense in an IRS audit:

• The first one, I’ve already mentioned, whatever the plan is, it has to be based on the facts of the case – very important. It should not be an abstract plan of defense; it should be one that is based specifically on your facts and circumstances.
• The second point is that it should be based on the documentation that you have or may be able to get, because ultimately, in the IRS audit, the party that can produce documents to prove its point is the one that will prevail on that point unless the evidence is unconvincing or fraudulant of course. I want to take this opportunity to say that you should never, never ever submit fraudulant documentation to the IRS. Having said that, it doesn’t mean that you cannot produce documentation, that is you can get testimony from a third party or parties about an event that happened. For example, if there was a repair or major repair done to a building that you owned, then you can go to the contractor and get a statement from the contractor that the major repair was done, this is how much was paid to me for doing this and this and this work. Of course, if the builder has the original invoices, even better.
• Point number three is that whatever the strategy is that you choose must be logical and should be presented in the form of a story about what had happened. Basically, if your story does not make sense, it’s not a good strategy. Strategy must be logical and based on the facts of the case – a logical sequence of events – very important.

If you’re being audited by the IRS, and you would like to secure professional help with respect to your IRS audit, you can call me at (952) 500-8159 or you can email me at [email protected]

Thank you for watching, until the next time.