An Hour on the IRS Website Rarely Helps
Most people spend that hour on the IRS website or buried in forums, decide their situation is different from everyone else's, and start drafting a response.
The IRS audits a small fraction of returns each year, but the selection is not random. Business expenses that run high relative to reported income. A 1099 that does not match what the return shows. A home office deduction on a Schedule C that draws a second look.
If one of those triggered a notice, you are already inside a process with rules, timelines, and risks that are not visible from the outside.
Every Answer You Give Voluntarily Opens Something
An IRS auditor is not hostile. They are professional, patient, and often measured in how they communicate. They are also trained to follow threads.
A question about vehicle mileage can expand into your entire Schedule C. A request to verify one year of income can surface questions about the year before it. Every document you hand over voluntarily, and every answer you give without strategy behind it, can expand what the IRS is now looking at.
IRS audit defense at the CPA level means none of that communication happens without us first. We review what is being asked. We answer it, nothing more. That discipline alone produces different outcomes.
Working with a general preparer who helped you file is not the same thing. They helped you report. We represent you.
Nothing Goes to the IRS Without Review
Tax audit representation through Maris & Associates CPAs covers the examination from the initial notice to the final determination. What that engagement includes:
If the scope expands beyond the original issue, we address that before it becomes a separate problem. Sales tax audit representation for state-level examinations runs through a different agency with different standards.
Same discipline, different agency.
Getting an Audit Notice Does Not Mean You Made a Mistake
The audit was triggered by a statistical flag, a form mismatch, or an industry-level pattern. Most clients who reach us for IRS audit representation in Everett and Snohomish County had a clean return. The letter does not tell you that.
What it is, is a process with a defined outcome, shaped almost entirely by how the response is managed from the start.
The part that wears people down is not the audit itself. It is carrying the weight of an open IRS matter while still running a business, managing clients, and getting through a normal week.
Representation removes you from the center of that. The auditor works with Maris. The correspondence goes through us. Once the determination arrives, the file closes and stays closed.
Contact Maris & Associates CPAs. We will review the situation, explain exactly what you are dealing with, and handle the process from there.