Short List to Reclassify Titles at IRS Hits Influential Advisers

The Trump administration’s order allowing the IRS to reclassify more than a dozen positions making them easier to fire includes some of the most influential positions at the embattled agency.

President Donald Trump’s long-awaited executive order signed Wednesday targets some of the highest-level career staffers in the federal government, classifying them so they’re treated like political appointees and removing key job protections.

While the list is shorter than expected, it ropes in positions critical to decision making. The IRS hasn’t shared internally more information on how it plans to execute the order. Agency staffers scrambled to see if their job was listed when the appendix came out.

Almost all of the positions government-wide are GS-15 and above and at the IRS, especially attorney advisers and counselor or adviser to the commissioner positions, can hold significant sway, lawyers said. Program managers also are embedded throughout the agency.

Good government groups and advocates for public workers said it was a crude attempt to politicize federal agencies.

“Removing poor performers when warranted is an important goal, but it’s just one piece of a much larger talent management puzzle that includes strong hiring practices, well-resourced HR offices and effective leadership,” said Partnership for Public Service President and CEO Max Stier in a statement.

The IRS over the last year has faced intense scrutiny as both Republicans and Democrats probe political influence at the agency, most recently with the Justice Department’s handling of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS.

“This change further erodes retention of institutional knowledge and increases the politicization of the agency,” said Nina Olson, former longtime National Taxpayer Advocate who’s now executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights.

Trump has argued the decision to reclassify would allow agency supervisors to quickly remove employees for poor performance or misconduct.

Longtime IRS watcher Pete Sepp, president of the conservative National Taxpayers Union, said the IRS has been insulated from politics for good reasons.

“This system has had the advantage of tamping down the most egregious political abuses of tax enforcement authority under Presidents of both parties, but it can also paradoxically allow harsh enforcement tactics to metastasize in the IRS bureaucracy because there are so few “outsiders” who can come in and change the culture,” Sepp said in an email.

He said a critical concern was the outcome for taxpayers and called on Congress to weigh in.

“Would this personnel authority clear bottlenecks in strategic plans, customer service upgrades, or implementation of protections that would improve the taxpayer experience?” Sepp said. “Congress could, and should establish metrics to measure the impact of the personnel changes.”

The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents thousands of IRS employees, filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of Schedule Policy/Career in January 2025. It also sued the Office of Personnel Management in November for failing to provide lists of federal employees it may target for reclassification and removal.

The union said litigation will resume.

“NTEU looks forward to aggressively pursuing that litigation and fighting to ensure the American people have their government services delivered by federal employees who were hired based on merit and skill, not partisan affiliation,” said National President Doreen Greenwald in a statement.

The IRS didn’t respond to a request for comment.