IRS denying first-time buyer credit

[manderly6]

Originally Posted by olrac

And yet still thousands cheaper per person than an audit. That's why people earning less than $100k are so rarely audited. They spend more to audit than they could ever hope to recover.

So your suggestion is what? Don't check for fraud?

[texdav]

Originally Posted by olrac

I seriously doubt that doing it this way is cheaper than catching people AFTER they commit the fraud, simply due to the resources needed by the IRS to do things this way.

Its alot cheaper than paying the moeny then investidting and filing fraud charges.8000 dollars is nothing when we are talking any court case involving investiagtors;attorney and court cost.In this case its upto you as to the burden of proof to file such a claim ;not theirs. Without proof they can just deny the claim as unproven eligible.I would start gathering documents because they are likely to make you a appointment with a IRS investiagtor near you.A letter saying why your disputing the denial is likely just the beginning .

[olrac]

The way I see it...

Their way:
$8000 per legitimate claim + resources (time, money) to investigate every claim (probably a couple grand per case) + $10k or more per case that proceeds further.

Better way:
$8000 per claim + resources to investigate 10-20% of claims that aren't cleared by check against data already possessed by IRS + $10k or more per case that proceeds further, - $8000 for each claim determined to be fraudulent (5-10%).

[manderly6]

Originally Posted by olrac

The way I see it...

Their way:
$8000 per legitimate claim + resources (time, money) to investigate every claim (probably a couple grand per case) + $10k or more per case that proceeds further.

Better way:
$8000 per claim + resources to investigate 10-20% of claims that aren't cleared by check against data already possessed by IRS + $10k or more per case that proceeds further, - $8000 for each claim determined to be fraudulent (5-10%).

Interested in knowing where you are getting these numbers from?

[janetvj]

And as I said, they don't have to "investigate" every claim. For example, in this case they could write a program that flags every return that has an amount entered on the line for the credit, and then match the name of the filer against names listed in a real property data-base. None of this requires anything but a computer program. The only "investigation" that occurs is for the returns where a match is found. All of the rest of them are processed and refunds are issued.