who is behind the audit?

IL

An odd question, stemming from audit my business went through last Fall:

I have an ongoing conflict with an office neighbor. We lease the upstairs, he leases the downstairs. He also manages (but doesn't own) the building, so has some authority over me. Last Fall, we got into a ridiculous argument over the noise an employees' car was making, which the neighbor had complained about continuously -- almost every morning. I never felt I had the right to order an employee of mine to get a quieter car, so basically ignored it.

But the neighbor got madder and madder, threatening to evict us, and finally threatening to use his "local connections" to get us audited.

Weird thing is, a few weeks after he made this threat, we WERE audited. It went fine, just inconvenient for an 11 person firm with other things to worry about. Questions:

1) What if anything can we do to either prove or disprove that this individual was behind this inconvenient event?

2) Is he prohibited from viewing our tax returns?

thx

He cannot see your tax returns unless he makes that a condition of renewing your lease. If he does, go over his head to the owner.

I doubt you can prove that he had anything to do with your audit. The IRS's best guarded secret is how it choses taxpayers for audit. You could file a complaint with the office asking them to investigate the possibility of a retaliatory audit, but I doubt you'd get anywhere.