IRS Can Fire More Positions at Will With Trump Executive Order

The IRS has the power to reclassify more than a dozen positions making them easier to fire after President Donald Trump signed a new executive order in his bid to shrink the federal government.

A slew of position types could be reclassified at the IRS and its legal arm, according to an appendix released by the White House Wednesday. More are on the list for the Treasury Department.

IRS workers who are senior advisers, human resource specialists, and program managers are among those who could be impacted. For the IRS’s chief counsel office, attorney advisors, senior level counselors to the commissioner, counselor to the general counselor, and senior legal adviser for regulatory affairs will be reclassified.

Career employees have for decades enjoyed strong job protections, including the ability to appeal any disciplinary action or termination before an independent agency. This order targets some of the highest level of career staffers that now under their new status as Schedule Policy/Career will be treated like political appointees.

Unions for public sector workers call the effort an attack on the professional workforce and expertise. Former IRS officials have warned that a reclassification would harm the IRS’s ability to hire new workers and reopen concerns that the agency would fold to political pressure.

About a quarter of the workforce left the IRS in the first year of the Trump administration, with many taking up incentives offered by Elon Musk’s so-called efficiency drive.

Under the order, about 8,000 positions government-wide can be re-categorized, a fraction of the 50,000 potential workers that could have been selected. The Trump administration has said the reclassification would allow agency supervisors to quickly remove employees for poor performance or misconduct.

Trump is picking up the never-implemented policy from his first term.