Most of what you've read online about IRS problems is wrong, or at least misleading. I'm Darrin Mish. I practice tax law in Tampa and I've been doing this for 32 years. Here's what's actually true.
The honest answer is that your odds are low, and that the question people are really asking has a backwards answer.
For tax year 2021, the most recent year the IRS considers complete, the agency examined about 0.3 percent of individual income tax returns. Roughly three out of every thousand. If you want the short version, yes, being audited is rare.
But the follow-up question is usually “how much do I have to make before they come looking,” and that one has an answer almost nobody expects. Making more money does not meaningfully raise your audit odds until you clear about half a million dollars. Making very little money raises them.
The Actual Numbers, by Income
These are IRS figures from Data Book Table 3-1, showing the percentage of individual returns examined for tax year 2021.
- No total positive income: 1.8 percent
- $1 to $25,000: 0.5 percent
- $25,000 to $50,000: 0.2 percent
- $50,000 to $75,000: 0.2 percent
- $75,000 to $100,000: 0.2 percent
- $100,000 to $200,000: 0.2 percent
- $200,000 to $500,000: 0.2 percent
- $500,000 to $1 million: 0.6 percent
- $1 million to $5 million: 0.9 percent
- $5 million to $10 million: 3.9 percent
- $10 million or more: 6.6 percent
Read down that list and find the flat stretch. From $25,000 all the way to $500,000, the rate does not move. A household making $40,000 and a household making $400,000 faced the same 0.2 percent.
Then look at the two ends. At $10 million and up, the rate is 6.6 percent, more than thirty times the middle. And at the bottom, under $25,000, it is 0.5 percent, more than double the middle.
The audit curve is not a ramp. It is a U.
Why the Bottom of the Curve Is So High
One line item explains most of it. Returns claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit were examined at 0.7 percent for tax year 2021.
Sit with that for a second. A taxpayer claiming the EITC, which requires low income to qualify at all, was audited at more than three times the rate of a taxpayer earning between $200,000 and $500,000.
The reason is mechanical rather than sinister. EITC eligibility turns on facts the IRS cannot verify by computer, like which household a child actually lived in for more than half the year. Those cases get worked by mail in enormous volume because they are cheap to work. The credit is also refundable, which means an improper claim sends money out the door rather than merely reducing tax collected, and the agency treats that differently.
Whatever the justification, the number is the number. If you hear that the IRS only goes after the wealthy, the data does not support it.
Not All Audits Are the Same Thing
Here is the part that changes what these percentages actually mean.
In fiscal year 2025, the IRS closed 441,578 individual examinations. Of those, 393,767 were correspondence audits, handled entirely by mail. Only 47,811 were field examinations. Nearly nine out of ten “audits” of individuals are a letter asking you to document one or two items.
And the split tracks income almost perfectly. In the $1 to $25,000 bracket, 127,616 of 131,153 examinations were correspondence. For EITC returns, 92,817 of 93,857 were correspondence, better than 98 percent.
Now the other end. At $10 million and above, 3,680 of 4,060 examinations were field audits. The proportions invert completely.
So the U-curve is really two different experiences wearing the same word. At the bottom it is a computer-generated letter about a credit. At the top it is a revenue agent, in person, with your records on the table. When someone says audits are rare, they are usually picturing the second one, which is rarer still.
Being Audited Does Not Mean You Owe
The Data Book tracks a number most people never see: examinations closed with no change to the return at all.
For tax year 2021, 65,979 of the individual examinations the IRS closed produced no change. That is better than 13 percent. One in eight audited returns was examined and left exactly as filed.
The no-change rate also climbs with income. At $200,000 to $500,000 it was 21 percent. At $500,000 to $1 million, 26.5 percent. At $5 million to $10 million, nearly 40 percent. Above $10 million, 42.9 percent.
At the top of the income scale, something close to half of all audits end with the IRS agreeing the return was right. Those taxpayers generally have representation, which is not a coincidence.
One Honest Caveat About These Numbers
I am quoting tax year 2021 on purpose. The IRS flags the two most recent years in its own table because those returns are still inside the three-year assessment window, so more examinations will be opened and the published rates will rise.
Tax year 2021 is the most recent year that is essentially final. Anyone quoting you a shockingly low rate for a recent year is quoting an incomplete number.
The flip side is that these rates are historical, and enforcement priorities shift with funding and staffing. A rate is a description of what happened, not a promise about what will.
What This Means for You
If you are a wage earner in the middle of that table with a straightforward return, the data says you are about as unlikely to be audited as anyone in the country. Two in a thousand. You can stop rehearsing the conversation in your head.
If you claim the EITC, your odds are meaningfully higher than your income would suggest, and the exposure is almost entirely a mail examination about whether your dependents qualify. Keep school records, medical records, and anything else establishing where a child actually lived.
If your total positive income is above $5 million, you are in genuinely different territory, and the audit you face is the in-person kind.
And if you reported no total positive income, meaning losses wiped out your income, you sat at 1.8 percent, six times the middle of the table. Large losses draw attention.
The Thing Worth Worrying About Instead
After 32 years of this work, I can tell you that audit anxiety is almost always pointed at the wrong target.
The IRS closed about 442,000 individual audits in fiscal year 2025. In that same year it closed 987,460 cases in its automated matching program, the one that produces CP2000 notices, and nearly 593,000 more under the program that files substitute returns for people who did not file at all.
The automated systems touch more than three times as many people as auditors do. If something from the IRS is going to land in your mailbox, the odds overwhelmingly favor a computer-generated notice proposing a change based on a 1099 you forgot, not an examiner asking to see your records.
Worry about the letter. It is the one that is actually coming.
Get Help Now
If you are facing an examination, or you have received a notice and are not sure what kind it is, know what you are dealing with before you respond. Contact the Law Offices of Darrin T. Mish, P.A. at (813) 229-7100 for a free consultation.