re: 63% of new IRS audits were on folks making less than $200K.

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but I’m not worried about being audited. Why are you?

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Audits are random... like if traffic stops were just based on "pull over every 25th car that passes today to make sure they are in compliance with everything, and make sure people know they could be pulled over randomly so they need to follow the rules." Airport security kind of works on that same premise, apparently... if you have TSA Pre-check you still get put into the regular line randomly when the computer hits a certain number of passengers (it happens to my wife for some reason almost every other time we fly) and someone told me even the Xray machine just tells them to pat down people on certain intervals when nothing gets scanned, just as a psychological thing to keep people in line.

But if you're an ambitious agent that wants to move up the chain, how do you do that? Probably by finding things to cite people on, right?

And the vast majority of the US falls into the "less than $200K households" so of course that's who will be audited the most. That's the group who will be most of any random selection.

There is a way to remove yourself from the audit pool... file an extension so you can file your return late. I was told this by an accountant... when I asked if they red flag people who file extensions every year, he said not that he has noticed.