Last week, a representative of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency arrived at IRS headquarters in DC. What now? The agency will lay off thousands of probationary workers in the middle of tax season, the AP reports, quoting two sources familiar with the plan. The New York Times also expects thousands of IRS layoffs as soon as next week. The exact number was unclear. This comes as the Trump administration has intensified sweeping efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce by ordering agencies to lay off nearly all probationary employees who had not yet gained civil service protection.
However, the IRS had been expected to hold off on mass layoffs until after the tax season ended. "I don't imagine anything's going to go on at the IRS until then or beyond," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Bloomberg last week, per the Times. "We're in the middle of the tax-filing season right now." Jan. 27 was the official start date of the 2025 tax season, and the IRS expects more than 140 million tax returns to be filed by the April 15 deadline.
The Biden administration had invested heavily in the IRS through an $80 billion infusion of funds in Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act, which included plans to hire tens of thousands of new employees to help with customer service and enforcement as well as new technology to update the tax collection agency. DOGE is looking to reverse things by shrinking the agency's size.
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