That's silly, unless you actually owe the amount claimed.
I was audited 30 years ago and the agent decided that expenses paid for via credit card weren't deductible in the current year, they had to wait until the next year to be deducted. I owed about 30 bucks. Big deal. I got my 30 bucks back the next year. The credit card versus cash payment problem is no longer the case, even as a cash basis taxpayer, BTW.
I owned an outfit doing $5 million a year in sales which was audited in '93. The IRS guy was camped out in my offices for a week. He left with no change whatsoever to the corporate return.
If you don't owe it, don't pay it. The only reason you would ever need a lawyer is if you are taking a very aggressive position.
We were audited once. The IRS guy was not nice, until....he found out that the IRS owed us almost $4000. We did get a little interest. Haven’t been audited since and that was about 25 years ago.
You got your way of sleeping at night and I have mine. I watch enough on shows such as 60 minutes etc. to see what happens to some people if they happen to draw the little gestapo agent. Granted most agents are decent enough people there is also the occasional Mike Nifong among them. A couple thousand dollars is not worth the sleepless nights IMHO.
My only run-in with the IRS was when they sent us a letter alleging we hadn’t claimed something like $2,500 in income. Turns out they had misread flexible spending account money as income. Anyway, I called an 800 number and explained. The woman looked it up, agreed then that we didn’t owe any more and a week later I got a letter confirming the record had been cleared.
From some of the horror stories I had heard, I had expected to go through weeks or months of red tape and maybe even have to hire a lawyer. Instead, it took about three minutes.