Unfortunately, you may not know for more than a year-or longer.The IRS reserves the right to audit your return just about indefinitely-but practically speaking, usually they don't do much auditing after three years. At first it is primarily a computer checking your return against data that the IRS has. This could trigger either an audit or a computer-generated letter. Based on the issue and your response-they can then decide to do an actual audit. They can. however, do a "human" audit at any time. If. for some reason,. they suspect fraud, or are given notification by either another agency or even a private citizen, they can choose to audit your return. It gets a little more complicated if they have reason to believe an individual is acting illegally and do not initiate an investigation within a certain time period- but that rarely happens.
