Keep Smiling

The Internal Revenue Service calls in a taxpayer for an audit. The best tactic is to fight truculently on every point, right? No, wrong. The taxpayer who turns a smiling face to his IRS questioner and takes a docile line will probably come out with more money in his pocket, according to a report prepared for the Administrative Conference of the U.S., an organization of federal officials and private citizens with a special interest in law and government. The conclusion: The IRS gives its employees so few guidelines on auditing tax returns that the whole process is likely to be "whimsical, inconsistent, unpredictable and highly personal." For some reason, the most generous examiners are in the Cincinnati district, which collected only 19% of its delinquent tax claims. But keep away from Baltimore. Agents there got 74% of what they went after.

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