I was contacted by a lawyer who said he was being audited and wanted me to take over. The previous representative was himself a tax lawyer. The tax lawyer liked going to the bar much more than meeting with the IRS to review the client's documents, so, he just pointed to the conference table piled with documents and let the auditor get to work while he went "out to lunch." The resulting audit report showed a potential liability in excess of $50,000. It seems the tax lawyer had not prepared the original return. That was done by a CPA who was sent to prison for aiding and abetting tax evasion. So, we have two "professionals" involved here. I decided to audit the books. After checking on a few tax entries, I could see that most of the tax information had been made up. I put the whole mess on a general ledger and balanced to the penny. I prepared an amended return and requested an audit reconsideration. I walked in to the IRS office only to find a U.S. Attorney waiting for me. When he learned that I was neither the client nor the preparer of the original return, he went back to his office and left me to go over the amended return with the auditor. The client was due a refund of over $10,000. Why? The jailbird CPA had deducted an entire ranch as an entertainment facility (which are never deductible). But upon obtaining records from the ranch and its use, I was able to treat it as a second office. The IRS had no problem with it. The lawyer-client did not go to jail. It would have been a tough prosecution anyway, since the original return had been filed in person and not through the mails (take note: most prosecutions relate to mail fraud). The point is, you may often find perfectly legal ways to take deductions where others did not.
It used to be a well-known admonition that a smart tax man never "files" a return for a client. You could fill an encyclopedia with all the reasons for not falling in to that trap.