Arizona to Take a Closer Look at Contingent Fee Audits

A few days ago, the Governor of Arizona signed House Bill 2343 into law.  The legislation makes some welcome and well-meaning changes to the way that unclaimed property audits (including, specifically, contingent fee audits) are conducted.  For example, the legislation provides that all holders will receive a "notice of rights" (1) making clear that the Department of Revenue makes all final decisions "that any unclaimed property is reportable;" (2) setting forth appeals procedures; (3) notifying holders where they can file complaints regarding auditor conduct; and (4) contact information for designated employees. 

In addition to these changes, the new legislation also signals that Arizona is taking a fresh look at the use of contingent fee audits, and whether there are any practical alternatives.  The law requires the Department of Revenue to issue a Request for Information by the beginning of next year to "explore the feasibility of contracting for audits . . . that are not directly or indirectly contingent on the auditor recovering unclaimed property."  This is obviously an important issue to the holder community.  Because the audit firm's payment at the end of an unclaimed property audit is generally calculated as a percentage of reportable property "identified" by the auditor, it is in the auditor's financial interest to take aggressive and novel positions intended to increase the amount due.  That is not to suggest that all audit firms do so, but the incentive alone is enough to cause many in the holder community to question the fairness of impartiality of these audits.  Hopefully, this is a first step in Arizona to formulating an audit process designed to locate unclaimed property actually due to the state, no more and no less.

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