Red flags for an IRS audit

Ever wonder why some tax returns are audited by the IRS while most are ignored? Well, there’s a whole host of reasons to this age-old question. The IRS audits only about 1% of all individual tax returns annually. The agency doesn’t have enough personnel and resources to examine each and every tax return filed during a year. So the odds are pretty low that your return will be picked for an audit. And of course, the only reason filers should worry about an audit is if they are cheating on their taxes.

More from Kiplinger.com • Calculate What the 2011 Tax Cut Is Worth to You • How Do You Rank as a Taxpayer? • The Most Overlooked Tax Deductions

However, the chances of you being audited or otherwise hearing from the IRS can increase depending upon various factors, including whether you omitted income, the types of deductions or losses claimed, certain credits taken, foreign asset holdings and math errors, just to name a few. Although there’s no sure way to avoid an IRS audit, you should be aware of red flags that could increase your chance of drawing some unwanted attention from the IRS. Here are the 12 most important ones:

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’re interested in learning more about the 12 red flags…