“Anybody could pretty much get away with anything up until this year, because just about nobody was being audited,” Wallach said. But with some extra money from Congress, the agency hired many more auditors last year and has trained them to start cracking down on questionable tax shelters and other dubious tax reduction strategies.

Wallach said that the agency has special task forces for different industries, and they know what’s going on. “They’re going after profitable small businesses because that’s where the money is,” he said. “Your expenditures and income had better be equal,” he warned, and if you’re taking cash and not reporting it, auditors can look at your cost of supplies and track your expenses. They will even drive around your neighborhood, he said, and then compare where you are living with the income on your tax reform. “It’s just common sense.”

Taking a deduction for bad debt is one of the possible triggers for an audit and the computer system kicks out certain things that look out of line, Wallach said, but many of the “red flags” change from year to year.

Tax attorneys and accountants won’t be as helpful as in the past in providing advice on how to reduce your taxes because they have been reminded by the IRS that they can be prosecuted for providing information on how to cover up tax avoidance. “The IRS gets people to pay their taxes by scaring them,” according to Wallach.