If visiting the IRS would cause you great hardship, you can ask that the office audit be held at your home or business. Hardship means that you’re disabled and can’t travel easily or that you can’t carry large boxes of records.
While in most situations you don’t want the auditor coming to your home or office, if it’s what you need you have the right to ask for it.
Alternatively, ask that the audit be conducted by mail—that is, turned into a correspondence audit. You’ll need a good reason why you can’t come to the IRS office: illness or disability, lack of transportation, long distance from the IRS office, small children at home, or whatever. If your audit issues are straightforward, the IRS might agree to it, in which case read Chapter 2.
But the IRS might refuse, and instead offer to send the auditor to your place.
The third option: if the IRS accepts that you cannot attend an office audit and your tax return has marginal audit potential, the IRS might quietly drop the audit. Don’t count on it, however.