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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe IRS is drafting plans to cut its workforce by as much as half through a mix of layoffs, attrition and incentivized buyouts, according to two people familiar with the situation.
The people spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to disclose the plans.
The layoffs are part of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce through billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency by closing agencies, laying off nearly all probationary employees who have not yet gained civil service protection and offering buyouts to almost all federal employees through a “deferred resignation program” to quickly reduce the government workforce.
A reduction in force of tens of thousands of employees would render the IRS “dysfunctional,” said John Koskinen, a former IRS commissioner.
The federal tax collector employs roughly 90,000 workers total across the United States, according to the latest IRS data. People of color make up 56% of the IRS workforce and women represent 65%.
Already, roughly 7,000 probationary IRS employees with roughly one year or less of service were laid off from the organization in February.
The organization also offered IRS employees—along with almost all federal employees across the government—“deferred resignation program” buyouts, though IRS employees involved in the 2025 tax season were told earlier this month that they would not be allowed to accept a buyout offer from the Trump administration until mid-May, after the taxpayer filing deadline.
In addition to the planned layoffs, the Trump administration intends to lend IRS workers to the Department of Homeland Security to assist with immigration enforcement. In a letter sent in February, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to borrow IRS workers to help with ongoing immigration crackdown efforts.
Koskinen and six other former IRS Commissioners wrote in the New York Times earlier this month: “Aggressive reductions in the I.R.S.’s resources will only render our government less effective and less efficient in collecting the taxes Congress has imposed.”
According to a White House memo sent to federal agencies in late February, agencies are to develop a report by March 13 on its reduction in force plans—but it is unclear whether the White House will approve the IRS’ reorganization plan and over what period of time it would be implemented.
Representatives for the White House, the Treasury Department and IRS did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment. The New York Times first reported the deliberations.
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This worked poorly in Greece. Look it up.
We don’t even need to look overseas. Look up “The Brownback Experiment”.
They’re really mad that the increases of the workforce under the Biden Admin worked so well. Audits on households making millions per year increased and the IRS uncovered billions of dollars in back taxes that rich people had tried to cheat out of. They’re furious.
More handouts for millionaires and billionaires
Do the math. With 161,000,000 million federal tax returns filed, that means each of the 90,000 IRS employees are responsible for 1,789 returns.
Of course, not all of these employees review returns. Many are service personnel responding to taxpayer queries.
Reduce any of these, and you can expect slower response times and delayed refunds, or even worse, tax fraud goes undetected because audits will be drastically reduce.
How does this make government more efficient and effective?
It doesn’t.
There is a bigger picture goal here . TRUMP;s tariff taxes are hidden national sales taxes on the imported content of products we buy . The next move is a national sales taxes on every thing we buy . Then declaring the income tax collections by the IRS dysfunctional to eliminate the Income tax and the IRS .