Does Filing An Extension Increase Your Audit Risk?

Well, April 17th has come and gone and we’ve survived another challenging tax season. We’ve spent the better part of the last two days preparing extensions for our clients. The typical question I got over the past two days goes something like this: “my friend’s brother told him that if you file an extension on your income tax return it increases the odds of being audited by the IRS”.

To the best of my knowledge, I don’t think our friends over at the Internal Revenue Service publishes data on audit rates for extended tax returns. Check out this article from Forbes, wrtitten by a tax attorney who gives his opinion on this subject along with some tidbits about the extension process.