IRS employees are leaving the agency en masse as the Trump administration plows ahead with cuts to the federal workforce.
About 22,000 IRS employees out of a workforce of around 100,000 have accepted buyouts from the Trump administration, The New York Times reported Tuesday. The agency has already gotten rid of 7,000 trial employees and about 5,000 other employees have left since the beginning of the year.
Additionally, the IRS is planning to get rid of a full 40 percent of its workforce after tax filing season, the Federal News Network reported.
An internal memo obtained by the outlet says that compliance and taxpayer service departments “will need to be trimmed.”
IRS service levels are bad. Only 31 percent of nearly 100 million taxpayer calls to the agency were answered in fiscal year 2024, the National Taxpayer Advocate reported last year.
The IRS cuts represent a 180-degree change from the Biden administration, which awarded the tax collector $80 billion in additional funding, more than half of which was initially supposed to go to increased tax enforcement and more audits on rich people.
— Tobias Burns
