Getting Ready for Audits: A Practitioner’s Guide to Navigating IRS Scrutiny

Prepare your practice for IRS scrutiny alongside Frost Law partners Rebecca Sheppard and Peter Haukebo. This comprehensive session examines the fundamentals of COVID-19 relief audits, spotlighting the exact issues drawing regulatory focus, such as qualified wage calculations, family attribution rules, controlled groups, and PPP offsets.

• Designed to ensure you are thoroughly audit-ready, our speakers will guide you through Employee Retention Credit (ERC) eligibility frameworks, robust substantiation strategies, and strong case theory development. You will also get essential updates on critical legal benchmarks, including Kwong v. United States and IRS release IR-2024-169.
• Identify the top issues most likely to trigger IRS audit scrutiny in Employee Retention Credit claims, including supply chain arguments, ownership aggregation, family attribution rules, and qualified wage calculations.
• Summarize the three methods of ERC eligibility — significant decline in gross receipts, full/partial suspension of business operations, and Recovery Startup Business status — and the documentation required to substantiate each.
• Evaluate whether a business may be part of a controlled group under brother-sister rules and assess how family attribution rules could affect ERC eligibility and qualified wage determinations.
• Discuss the implications of Kwong v. United States and IRS IR-2024-169 on current ERC audit activity, including the scope of automatic deadline extensions and the IRS's ongoing compliance enforcement efforts.
• Demonstrate the ability to research and apply appropriate governmental orders to support a partial suspension claim, distinguishing between qualifying mandatory orders and non-qualifying government statements or emergency declarations.