I know you've seen headlines and ads claiming that you can completely avoid a tax audit by following certain advice. If you're hoping to learn how to completely avoid a tax audit, lean in and I'll tell you a secret: you can't. In fact, according to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) (data book downloads as a pdf), in 2015, the agency audited 1,228,117 individual income tax returns. In particular, the figures on those first two pages of your tax return need to add up. That might be true in high school but not when it comes to tax returns.

Source: Forbes February 23, 2017 19:48 UTC