On Thursday, a senior official at the U.S. Internal Revenue Service informed staff members that approximately 6,000 employees would be dismissed, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. This move would represent about 6% of the IRS workforce, occurring during the crucial tax-filing period.
These job cuts are part of a broader initiative led by President Donald Trump, aimed at significantly reducing the size of the federal workforce. The effort has already impacted a wide range of government sectors, from banking regulators and forest workers to rocket scientists and many other employees across various agencies. Driving this overhaul is tech billionaire Elon Musk, a major financial backer of Trump’s presidential campaign.
The layoffs predominantly affect employees who were brought on as part of the agency’s expansion under the previous administration of Democratic President Joe Biden. Biden had aimed to bolster enforcement against high-income taxpayers, which resulted in an increase in the IRS’s workforce to approximately 100,000 employees, up from 80,000 when he assumed office.
Budget experts from independent organizations suggest that the expansion could lead to higher government revenue and help reduce the country’s significant budget deficits. However, Republicans aligned with Trump argue that this expansion will only lead to greater harassment of everyday taxpayers.
The employees being laid off are still in their probationary phase, which means they have fewer job protections compared to tenured staff members.
The IRS is handling these workforce reductions more cautiously than other federal agencies, considering the timing during the peak of its tax season, with the April 15 filing deadline rapidly approaching.
The tax season for 2025 began on January 27, with the IRS anticipating over 140 million individual tax returns for the 2024 tax year to be filed by the deadline.
The layoffs primarily impact revenue agents, customer service staff, specialized auditors, and IT personnel across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C., as per sources familiar with the matter.
Despite these cuts, the IRS will retain a significant number of probationary employees deemed essential for processing returns, including those assisting and advocating for taxpayers, according to one insider.
The White House has not disclosed how many of the nation’s 2.3 million civil-service workers are slated for layoffs, nor has it provided any figures on the planned reductions. Last week, around 75,000 federal employees opted for a buyout offer.
This initiative has been welcomed by many Republicans, who view it as an effort to trim what they see as an overgrown, inefficient, and often disloyal federal workforce, particularly targeting agencies that regulate businesses and enforce tax laws—many of which have oversight over Musk’s companies, such as SpaceX, Tesla, and Neuralink.
Musk’s team, working under the Department of Government Efficiency, has also halted contracts worth approximately $8.5 billion, which were associated with foreign aid, diversity training, and other programs that Trump opposes. Both Trump and Musk aim to reduce federal spending by at least $1 trillion from the $6.7 trillion federal budget, though Trump has emphasized that popular benefit programs, which account for about a third of the total budget, will not be affected.
Democratic opponents argue that Trump is overstepping his constitutional boundaries and undermining essential government services that directly benefit middle-class families.
{Matzav.com}