The IRS launched a new series of layoffs on Friday starting with the agency’s civil rights office and compliance, according to an e-mail obtained by ABC News.
Overall, the agency plans to reduce almost a quarter of its workforce with the cuts from Friday, depending on the plans.
“This action is taken to increase the efficiency and efficiency of the IRS in accordance with the agency’s priorities”, according to the e-mail, which added that dismissals “will lead to personnel discounts between several offices and job categories”.
The civil rights office will actually be closed by this decision, the remaining employees moved to the office of the chief lawyer, according to the email.
The agency had previously developed plans to reduce around 18% to 20% of the workforce by 100,000 people by mid-May.
Headquarters Internal Revenue Service (IRS), February 13, 2025, in Washington, DC
Kayla Bartkowski / Getty Images
Friday, the email sent to IRS employees said that the reduction in force “will be implemented in phases” and noted that employees will be offered incentives for early retirement from next week.
The agency also recently put around 50 IT security members on administrative leave, according to people familiar with the move, while the agency faces pressures to carry out reductions in labor and data sharing requests through the federal government during the tax season. The Trump administration said that the workforce changes will not affect the staff working directly to deal with income tax declarations.
However, layoffs can still lead to delays.
“The main thing: forever, it is an absolute basic rule that you keep things stable during the classification season. Because it is delicate,” said a former IRS commissioner to ABC News. “And the idea that almost 10% of the entire IRS workforce is dismissed in the middle of the deposit season is extremely risky.”
Earlier this year, more than 4,000 IRS employees have accepted the Trump administration’s deferred resignation offer. The agency also dismissed more than 6,600 probationary employees, but was forced to reintegrate them under judicial orders.
It is not clear if the members of these two groups of employees will be targeted in the new strength reductions.
Several senior agencies, including the director of human resources, the acting commissioner and the interim lawyer general, have resigned or demoted since January.
The IRS and the White House did not respond to the requests for comments from ABC News.
