The IRS will send you a series of notices (starting seven or eight months after the due date of the return) asking you to file the return. If you don't file the application, the IRS will subject you to a “tax delinquency investigation.” As part of an audit or investigation, IRS employees may make official and sometimes unannounced visits to analyze taxes due or returns due. Generally, taxpayers will first receive a letter or notice from the IRS in the mail. If a taxpayer has an outstanding federal tax debt, the IRS will request full payment, but will provide them with a variety of payment options.
If you are an independent contractor, earning investment or interest income, or selling real estate or stocks, the IRS receives information about your payments annually. The IRP is likely to detect that you did not file the application. The IRS is 12 to 24 months late in notifying people who do not file the return they discover. So don't think that, if you haven't heard from the IRS within a year or two after the application deadline, you're free to stay home.
The IRS will catch him, it's only a matter of time. To ensure that your payment is quickly credited, use the proof of payment and the barcoded envelope provided by the IRS to make the payment. If you haven't filed for many years and decide to file your return again this year, don't worry about the IRS automatically checking for all other years that you haven't filed. Then, find a tax or criminal attorney right away and don't have any more direct contact with anyone from the IRS.
However, my advice to most non-tax filers is to simply start filing their tax returns without first contacting the IRS. On the other hand, the IRS normally has just three years to audit a return starting from the date it was filed. The IRS now examines these investments to ensure that their underlying purpose is not to avoid paying taxes. Many people who are afraid to prepare and file returns because they thought they owed money to the IRS are pleasantly surprised.
When you file your return on your own, the somewhat remote IRS campus initially handles your file. If you owe taxes but don't have the money to pay the full amount, file a return and submit what you can. Learn more about criminal investigation and how to know if it's really the IRS who is knocking or knocking on doors to conduct audits and collect from the IRS. Publication 4518PDF, What you can expect when the IRS assigns your account to a private collection agency.
IRS criminal investigators can visit a taxpayer's home or business without warning during an investigation. If an IRS agent contacts you to let you know that you haven't filed a return but doesn't ask you to file a return, you start to worry. Even so, taxpayers will generally first receive several letters (called notices) from the IRS in the mail. If you file an amended return close to the three-year deadline for auditing, the IRS may be willing to accept it only on the condition that you agree to extend the auditing period beyond the three-year deadline.
There have been reports that scammers may try to contact people with a very official-looking email purporting to offer their tax refund.