I'm also 0 for 4 on tax preparers / tax accountants, so I concur with you its best to just do it yourself, which is what I now do. Only time I ever got audited (and failed) was when I had employed an accountant, since then I've never had a problem including passing audits. The tax code isn't /that/ complicated for most people's situation, and it's well worth understanding it.

I'm 1 for 6. And my current firm is overworked. I'm moving to do it myself (three companies, fund admin and personal). Recently Found a Tax-Accountant, not a CPA, who does advice only, no paperwork, who I'm using to cross-check my AI tools.

I am a CPA with 20+ years of experience and I feel like I need to defend our industry here.

There is no such thing as "failing" an IRS audit. You either under reported income, overstated deductible expenses, or your "accountant" changed the numbers you provided and committed fraud, which would have resulted in immediate legal proceedings by the IRS against the preparer. So did you "fail" because your preparer committed federal tax fraud or did you underreport your income?

The statement that the one time you used an accountant you got audited implies that you are confusing causation with correlation. There are about 6 ways that the IRS selects returns for audit but only 3 are actually relevant here.

- Information Matching (ie. if your W2 does not match the W2 submitted by your employer). This mostly used for your basic W2, 1099DIV, etc. kind of taxpayer and is usually just a letter from the IRS telling you your numbers are wrong and you need to amend your return.

- If they are examining a related return (ie. you own a business and another partner in that business is being audited)

- Computer scoring which breaks down into the Discriminant Function System (DIF), basically, how does your return compare to similar returns, and Unreported Income DIF, what is the potential that your return underreported income. This is what is commonly used for businesses and self employed individuals' Schedule C. Basically, when you prepare a business return (1040 Sch. C, 1041, 1065, 1120, 1120S, or 990) you have to report your business industry's NAICS code, and provide a single line explanation what your business does. Using this and the return data, the IRS is able to score a return on the likliehood that profit is understanded by comparing a businesses income and expenses to the norm for asimilarly sized businesses in that industry. T