[PaulDavisThe1st]

But I do worry ... that I may not get an audit notice. I thought that as an American, I was entitled to one, since people go one about this all the time. In 35 years, I've never received one.

Oh wait ... the audit rate is 0.38%

Oh and wait again ..

> Of the more than 164 million individual income tax returns filed with the IRS last year, only 626,204 were audited—down from 659,003 during fiscal year 2021. Of those 626,204 audits, 93,595 were regular audits while the remainder (532,609) were correspondence audits, which are usually done for simple mistakes on a tax return and can be easily corrected through mail correspondence with the IRS.

https://gallerosrobinson.com/insight-inside/irs-audit-rates-...

Hmm. I guess I'll have to keep waiting for my dedicated agent and terrifying audit process.

[BuyMyBitcoins]

The IRS gained this reputation in the 1980’s when audits were much more common and likely to happen to middle class people.

It may have been warranted, though, because Congress passed a law that required people to provide a social security number for the dependents claimed on the return. Before that, you could just claim you had a dependent without providing proof. And, lots of people did just that.

[mindslight]

Also in the 1980's, corporate customer service was still staffed by reasonably competent and empowered employees. So having that for comparison, the government failure modes of incompetence getting entrenched plus layered bureaucracy looked quite poor.

Now the corporate fashions have gotten rid of all the competent reps, through underpay and disciplining anybody that speaks up. And corporations have developed even more bureaucratic diffusion of responsibility than government! Add in the cherry on top of offshoring (heavy accent plus lowest-bidder voip jitter), corporate customer service has become generally terrible.

So with that backdrop, one expects that calling the government will be even worse. But what you actually find are reps that have the bandwidth to actually understand at least some of what they're talking about, as they haven't been squeezed like the corporate world has.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

A dependent saves you a rather small amount of tax. By my understanding, audits are focused primarily on failure to report actual income, or claiming outsized business expense.