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The Internal Revenue Service is preparing to conduct mass firings of 6,700 employees beginning Thursday, according to multiple employees notified of the plans.
Staff in their probationary periods—mostly recent hires, though in some cases longtime federal workers—received notice that they must report into the office Thursday and bring all of their government equipment, identification cards, parking permits and other documents. Managers have received instructions to report to the office so they can help with "separating" staff, which in some cases will be employees who do not report to them but those whose managers are in a different location. IRS has even created a portal on its internal site to keep employees apprised of “recent workforce updates.”
The dismissals are expected to affect probationary employees ranging from recent graduates to veterans to specialized auditors across all 50 states, said one current IRS employee briefed on the plans who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record. They expect reductions in force to come next, they said, noting that “they want to keep cutting.”
The new internal page, published Wednesday, promises more information to come but so far contains links to information on employees rights and obligations, access to individual personnel folders, a platform to create a retirement account and unemployment options.
Employees received emails Wednesday afternoon instructing them to report to their place of duty Thursday with their equipment, though the messages did not directly mention they would be terminated. Some employees received more direct confirmation of the agency’s plans to dismiss them from their supervisors.
“We understand that coming in on short notice may be an inconvenience, and we truly appreciate your flexibility,” one such email to employees read.
Employees from IRS’ Large Business and International Division and its Research, Applied Analytics and Statistics Division were among those who received the notices to report, though the impact is expected to be widespread throughout the agency.
IRS management told employees in their emails Thursday they were following orders from the Trump administration.
“Under an executive order, IRS has been directed to terminate probationary employees who were not deemed as critical to filing season,” one email obtained by Government Executive said. “We don't have many details that we are permitted to share, but this is all tied to compliance with the executive order.”
The cuts follow years of effort by the Biden administration to beef up the agency’s workforce, modernize its antique technology and improve customer service using tens of billions from the Inflation Reduct Act — money that Republicans have aimed to cut. The IRS workforce eclipsed 100,000 employees in fiscal 2024, up from 80,000 as the start of the Biden administration.
Among the work they’re doing is updating core IRS tech that dates back to the 1960s. Last fall, the agency was still manually processing paper tax returns, with employees keying returns into government computers. Nina Olson, former National Taxpayer Advocate, recently told lawmakers that a brain drain of IRS employees with institutional knowledge will hurt work to modernize the tax agency.
The terminations come in the midst of the current filing season. Some IRS employees were previously told they could not accept the administration’s “deferred resignation” offers until May 15, after tax season has ended.
The IRS isn’t the only government agency where employees are being cut. The Trump administration last week began firing thousands of federal employees who are in their probationary periods, typically those hired within the past one to two years depending on their hiring mechanism. Such workers have weaker civil service job protections. The Trump administration has, in some cases, included longtime government employees that were recently hired or promoted into new positions, though the legal rationale for quickly dismissing those workers is less clear.
After his election, President Trump announced he would take the unusual step of replacing the existing IRS commissioner, Danny Werfel, whose term was not set to expire until 2027, with his own choice, former Rep. Billy Long, R-Mo. Long has not yet received a confirmation vote in the Senate, though Werfel stepped down upon Trump’s inauguration.
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