# Question about how the IRS operates, if anyone knows.



## ironpony (Jun 7, 2017)

I have an idea for a story I am developing, and the main character is an IRS agent, or auditor, or accountant.  What is the title anyway, if you go out to audit a company to make sure their money is in order?

Now he goes to investigate a wine company, who's has been selling a lot more older, aged wine than they should normally have.  So he goes to investigate, and wine company goes to bribe him, but when he can't cover it up, the wine company then resorts to more sinister tactics to shut him up.  However, I am wondering how prepared for danger this character could be.  Do IRS agents pack sidearms, cause they know they could be going up against people will might want to prevent them finding out the truth, for example?

Or are they just unarmed accountants, with no training for that sort of thing at all?


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## aj47 (Jun 7, 2017)

Hello.  It depends on what they are doing as to what the title is.  Seriously.  Call up your nearby <spammy tax relief service> and offer to take one of their enrolled agents to lunch.  "Enrolled agents" are people who are licensed to represent people with the IRS.  They can tell  you all you need to know about the IRS without actually *being* the IRS.


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## Bloggsworth (Jun 8, 2017)

If an IRS agent with a gun turned up at my company I'd admit to things I hadn't done... Why would an auditor have a gun, his most powerful weapon is his calculator - The most serious battle when being audited is that between two balance sheets...


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## Terry D (Jun 8, 2017)

The IRS doesn't come to you. They have you come to them, and no, they are not armed.


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## Bloggsworth (Jun 8, 2017)

Terry D said:


> The IRS doesn't come to you. They have you come to them, and no, they are not armed.



Really? You have to take all your filing cabinets full of invoices, delivery notes, credit notes, pay slips - You'd need a hundred vans if you were Amazon on the way to be audited. In the UK the tax inspector comes to your place of work so that he has immediate access to any paperwork he asks to see.

Inspectors have even been known to sit in reastaurants counting peas in order to estimate whether a company is fiddling the numbers...


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## ironpony (Jun 8, 2017)

Bloggsworth said:


> If an IRS agent with a gun turned up at my company I'd admit to things I hadn't done... Why would an auditor have a gun, his most powerful weapon is his calculator - The most serious battle when being audited is that between two balance sheets...



Well a lot of people can get pretty defensive when it comes to government representatives taking their money away.  For example, I have a friend who is a debt collector, and he always is armed when going out to do that cause he has been shot at a couple of times, when people did not want pay their debts.  It's rare but it happens, so I thought maybe an IRS agent would be in the same danger perhaps.


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## ppsage (Jun 8, 2017)

It seems unlikely to me that an IRS agent would have the job training to responsibly act as an armed official. Or that the agency would undertake such programs when there are already armed federal marshals whose job it is to provide such services. There are police officers who specialize in forensic accounting and, as members of the law enforcement community, presumably must maintain firearms accreditation, but I think in most instances they too call on others more familiar with armed encounters for assistance. I expect gov't officials rarely go into situations where gun-play seems a possibility without taking some beefy guys in uniforms with them.


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## ironpony (Jun 8, 2017)

Okay thanks.  Do you think that the company trying silence the IRS agent, by threats and force, is an overreaction then, to keep the IRS agent from reporting the fraud?


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## kilroy214 (Jun 8, 2017)

Terry D said:


> The IRS doesn't come to you. They have you come to them, and no, they are not armed.



This is one of the most terrifying statements I've ever read.


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## LeeC (Jun 9, 2017)

kilroy214 said:


> This is one of the most terrifying statements I've ever read.


You better believe it. Many years ago the wife and I attached the 1099 for a pervious job that I left after the first week of the tax year, but forgot to add it in the calculations. We weren't trying to hide anything, and refigured it made only about $30 difference in our taxes. Our benevolent IRS [that allows the rich to take advantage of any loopholes our honorable legislature provides them] waited three years, then sent us a notice of a $3000 fine. I talked to a lawyer at the time that told me it would cost many more thousands to contest, and I would most likely lose.


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## Winston (Jun 10, 2017)

We were audited about ten years ago.
Yes, you go to them.  The way a Serf is summoned to his Lord's keep.  It's a power thing.  If you have to bring file cabinets of documentation, too bad, that's on you.  Hire a pack mule.  Not their concern.

They will have their plan of attack well thought through.  It's much like a criminal adversarial trial.  Only you are presumed guilty.  There are almost no mitigating factors to be considered.  If you violated X, you pay the delinquent amount and pay Y in penalties.  Period.  Their only flexibility is that they will set-up a payment plan.  The same as if a Serf can't fully tithe, the Lord will send his goons to take His cut.

So, in your story, I'd find it hard to believe the criminal wine guys could in any way intimidate the IRS.  They've been shaking people down for a century.  Just unarmed accountants?  Oh my God.   
"_A man with a briefcase can steal more than any man with a gun._"  Don Henley.


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## ironpony (Jun 10, 2017)

But the wine company does kidnap the IRS agent, and put a gun to his head, threatening to come after him and his loved ones unless he fudges his reports.  So isn't having a gun put to your head enough to be considered intimidation?


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## Winston (Jun 10, 2017)

ironpony said:


> But the wine company does kidnap the IRS agent, and put a gun to his head, threatening to come after him and his loved ones unless he fudges his reports.  So isn't having a gun put to your head enough to be considered intimidation?



You make the common error of assuming your adversary has the same values you do.  In this case, valuing human life.  
Of course, I jest.  I'm sure an IRS agent would at least be concerned about the lives of his loved ones.  One would assume.


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