Detailed federal employment tax audits to begin in February 2010:  In February the IRS National Research Program (NRP) will begin a study on employment taxes. It's the first IRS study on employment taxes in 25 years. The project was originally scheduled to begin in November 2009. The IRS believes that the project is necessary because there may have been significant changes in business practices with respect to employment taxes since the last IRS employment tax study in the 1980s. The two main goals of the IRS National Research Program are: (1) to secure statistically valid information for computing the employment tax gap, and (2) to determine compliance characteristics, so the IRS can focus on the most noncompliant employment tax areas. The IRS will randomly select 2,000 taxpayers for employment tax examinations each year for the next three years. The examinations will be comprehensive in scope. Records pertaining to employment tax returns and issues will be subject to review during the examinations. The IRS is advising employers to have all of their records available to expedite the examinations. Taxpayers who are selected for audit will receive notices describing the NRP process. It does not necessarily mean that an employer has incorrectly filed a return if an employer is selected for audit. It is possible that an employer will not owe any additional taxes as a result of the audit.