As an American citizen, you’re always in fear of making a mathematical error when you're filing your taxes unless you’ve got a professional doing it for you. This feeling of fear can become a lot stronger when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sends you a piece of mail stating that you’re going to be audited. Luckily, knowing how an audit works and the steps you need to take during the audit can help you relieve some of that fear very quickly. The Different Types of Audits While there are quite a few types of audits that the IRS conducts, the most common three that you should expect are the correspondence audit, office audit, and line-by-line audit. Correspondence Audit: This audit … [Read more...]
The Case of the Disappearing Gold
When I was in the 6th grade (many, many years ago) my class took a field trip to New York City and visited the NY FED. The highlight of the trip for me was a ride down the elevator (or more precisely what was at the bottom. The ride took forever with dozens of kids and one security guard in that tight stuffy space. Anticipation built as we went down what seemed like miles into the earth where the vaults rested on Manhattan bedrock. And what was in those vaults? Gold! Lots of gold! Each vault had a name on it but not people's names, countries names. After all in those days people weren't allowed to own gold. For years now there has been a controversy as to whether our (the U.S.) Gold … [Read more...]
