Corporate Taking

What is the name of your state? MI
If I am a bookkeeper of a MI Corporation and the two owners who are sole shareholders are expensing personal items to the company in excess of $20,000 per year each.
1. Am I responsible in anyway if they are audited by the IRS?
2. Also, how many years back can and usually will the IRS go if
they are audited and start finding tax evasion?
3. What can happen to the owners if they are audited and
caught?
4. Can this become a criminal case by the IRS?

Thank You

[abezon]

Make sure your books show these expenditures as personal items. Do not sign ANY corporate papers. You are merely the hired help. As long as you don't sign anything, you should be OK. You do not have a positive duty to inform the IRS of their perfidity.

Your responsibility would stem from them claiming they did not know you had included personal expenses in the company expenses, and they didn't know the returns they were signing were based on fraudulent books. Gather & maintain the evidence necessary to show that you did not assist in their tax fraud -- like creating a bookkeeping entry that says "personal expenses" in your annual P/L & cash flow statements.

Thre IRS can go all the way back to the beginning of the corp if they determine the shareholders have filed fraudulent returns. The owners could be reassessed, fined, and sent to jail.

Is there a statue of limitations for criminal charges for tax evasion?