The IRS is laying off around 7,000 employees, the AP reported, or around 7% of its 100,000-person workforce. The cuts are being made under directives from the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The fired employees are probationary workers who do not yet have civil service protection. Most of them work in compliance, the branch of the IRS that handles auditing and collections. More than 3,500 of them are part of the IRS’s Small Business/Self-Employed division, the Journal of Accountancy said.
The firings extend beyond Washington, DC, where more than 100 IRS staffers were fired. “Hundreds” of layoffs are anticipated in states including Texas, Florida, Georgia, and New York, ABC News reported. Around 400 IRS workers were fired in Philadelphia.
Kevin Hassett, director of the White House Economic Council, implied that the firings were for cause. They were “absolutely on the table for good reasons,” he said, as the New York Times reported. “There are more than 100,000 people working to collect taxes and not all of them are fully occupied.”
Emails sent to staff being laid off said that, in effect, “your ability, skills, and performance do not make you a fit for federal employment,” Alex Jay Berman, EVP of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) Chapter 71, said, according to NBC10. But all fired staff received identical letters regardless of performance or tenure, he noted, including some who hadn’t been employed long enough to receive performance reviews. He described the letters as “willfully incorrect and, to our belief in NTEU, unlawful.”
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Logjams ahead? The cuts come in the middle of tax filing season, which began on January 27. Earlier this month, the IRS told employees it considered critical to filing season that they were not permitted to take “deferred resignations” offered by the Office of Personnel Management until a month after tax season ended. But in its letters to fired staff, the agency claimed they were not critical to filing season, the New York Times reported.
Some observers, including the AICPA, warn that the cuts will compromise service. Members of the Democratic Senate Finance Committee stated that it’s “nearly inevitable” that an IRS hiring freeze, combined with layoffs, will “delay refunds and degrade taxpayer service,” the Worcester Telegram reported. US Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA) was more blunt. “I’d prioritize submitting your taxes ASAP if you want your returns back anytime soon,” he wrote on X.