Trump Aims to Cut IRS Workforce in Half by End of Year (1)

The Trump administration is aiming to cut up to half of the IRS’s workforce compared to its January head count, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The reductions would take place across divisions in the agency and would be achieved through a combination of attrition, the deferred resignation plan, layoffs of new hires, and reductions in force. The administration hopes to achieve the reductions by the end of the year, the source said.

Steep cuts to the IRS’s roughly 100,000 workforce is expected to throw off its growing progress to improve customer service, modernize, and catch taxpayers not paying what they owe. Without the beefed-up workforce thanks to the tens of billions of extra funding from the 2022 tax-and-climate law known as the Inflation Reduction Act, audits will likely take longer and phone wait times will go back up.

“These layoffs would add hundreds of billions or more to deficits and encourage tax cheating, tilting the tax system further toward the wealthy and business interests at the expense of everyday Americans” Lily Batchelder, former assistant treasury secretary for tax policy and professor at NYU Law, said in a statement.

The reduction goal includes IRS employees who have already left or were fired, which is about 12,000 employees. Between 4% and 5% of the IRS’s workforce took the offer from Trump adviser Elon Musk to resign and be paid until Sept. 30, the leader of the agency’s union said earlier Tuesday. About 7,400 probationary employees at the agency have been fired.

More than half of the IRS workforce is eligible to retire within six years, according to National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins in a report earlier this year.

The New York Times first reported the goal. The IRS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.