WASHINGTON — Two people who know about the situation say that the IRS is working on plans to cut its staff by up to half through a mix of firings, voluntary retirements, and buyouts with incentives.
The people spoke on Tuesday but asked to remain anonymous because they were not allowed to talk about the plans.
The firings are part of the Trump administration’s plan to reduce the size of the federal government workforce through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. To do this, agencies are being shut down, almost all probationary employees who have not yet gained civil service protection are being fired, and almost all federal employees are being offered buyouts through a “deferred resignation program.”
John Koskinen, a former IRS commissioner, said that if tens of thousands of workers were let go, the IRS would become “dysfunctional.”
The IRS’s most recent data shows that the federal tax collector works with about 90,000 people across the United States. There are 56% people of color working for the IRS, and 65% are women.
It was already announced in February that the IRS was firing about 7,000 probationary workers with less than a year of service.
The group also offered “deferred resignation program” buyouts to IRS employees and almost all federal employees across the government. However, IRS employees working on the 2025 tax season were told earlier this month that they could not accept a buyout offer from the Trump administration until mid-May, after the deadline for filing taxes.
Besides laying off workers, the Trump administration also plans to send IRS workers to the Department of Homeland Security to help with immigration enforcement. Kristi Noem, Secretary of DHS, asked Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury, in a letter sent in February to borrow IRS workers to help with current efforts to crack down on immigration.
Early this month, Koskinen and six other past IRS Commissioners wrote in the New York Times, “Aggressive cuts to the I.R.S.’s resources will only make our government less effective and less efficient at collecting the taxes Congress has imposed.”
A White House memo sent to federal agencies at the end of February says that they need to make a report by March 13 on their plans to reduce staff. However, it is not clear if the White House will accept the IRS’s plan to reorganize or how long it will take to put into action.
The Associated Press asked the White House, the Treasury Department, and the IRS for comment, but they did not reply. The New York Times was the first to report on the talks.
