The IRS, midway through preparations for next year’s filing season, is once again facing staffing cuts, now that the Trump administration has sent layoff notices across the federal workforce.

The Trump administration, in court filings posted last Friday, said it laid off approximately 1,446 employees at the Treasury Department — as part of a broader reduction-in-force that targeted about 4,200 federal workers.

The Treasury layoffs mostly impact the IRS, especially its human resources and IT workforce.

Several IRS employees told Federal News Network they were shocked to receive RIF notices last Friday, after senior leaders told staff this summer that layoffs were off the table.

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The IRS lost more than 25% of its workforce this year to voluntary separation incentives, including early retirement offers and the deferred resignation program.

IRS employees say the layoffs put additional stress on an already beleaguered agency, which is looking to hire and train a substantial number of employees ahead of next year’s filing season.

Federal News Network spoke to five IRS employees for this story, who all spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation.

Top administration officials, however, have signaled that even further cuts may be coming to the federal workforce.

President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that the shutdown “shouldn’t have happened,” but said his administration is using the shutdown as an opportunity to close down federal programs “that we wanted to close up, or that we never wanted to happen.”

Trump said his administration would have a full list of programs slated for closure by Friday.

“We are closing up Democrat programs that we disagree with, and they’re never going to open again,” he said.

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The Office of Management and Budget, which is leading layoff plans, posted on X Tuesday that the agency “is making every preparation to batten down the hatches and ride out the Democrats’ intransigence.”

“Pay the troops, pay law enforcement, continue the RIFs, and wait,” OMB wrote.

‘Vital roles’ in hiring get layoff notices

An IRS human resources employee who received a layoff notice on Friday told Federal News Network that their work — and the work of their colleagues — played “vital roles” in the agency preparing for next year’s filing season.

The HR employee said they were surprised to receive the RIF notice, because senior IRS officials rescinded layoffs and told staff this summer that the agency would no longer pursue any reductions-in-force.

“We had received an email — great news, RIFs are off the table for the foreseeable future. We lost too many people through DRP and attrition,” the HR employee said.

Around the same time, the IRS planned to invite 700 revenue agents and officers to come back to work, after they accepted deferred resignation and agreed to leave the agency on Sept. 30.

But according to several IRS employees, senior leaders have since walked back this plan. Instead, the agency plans to make new hires, instead of bringing back any employees who have completed extensive on-the-job training.

“The plan going forward then was, ‘We’ll just put out these hiring announcements. DRP people, they’re welcome to apply if they’d like, but this is just open to the public. It’s open to everybody,’” the HR employee said.

The IRS is looking to fill thousands of customer service positions ahead of next year’s filing season.

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The HR employee said the agency spends about $15,000 to hire a new IRS contact service representative. Those costs include onboarding, background checks and training — which can take up to a year, in order for new employees to properly address taxpayer concerns.

IRS officials told the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration in a recent report that the agency will need to hire about 3,500 new employees to maintain its current level of phone support. According to the report, those IRS hiring efforts began in August.

“We were already short-staffed beforehand,” the HR employee said. “Even if they bring on these 3,500 contact reps that they had the announcement for, they’re not going to be fully trained in time.”

The employee said layoff notices also impacted the agency’s dedicated hotline for tax professionals seeking help from the IRS on behalf of their clients.

A former IRS contact representative who trained and coached new hires said they took the deferred resignation offer, and received an email in mid-September, inviting them to rescind their resignation and come back to work.

The former employee said they initially wanted to rescind their DRP offer, but told Federal News Network that a follow-up email to finalize those plans never came.

“Now, with the current shutdown, I don’t want to go back,” the former employee said. “It has been nothing but chaos and uncertainty, and I can’t live like that.”

‘We are not going to be able to train these people to do their jobs’

A second IRS HR employee who also received a layoff notice last Friday said the agency didn’t provide a “bump-and-retreat” option for impacted employees.

Bump-and-retreat is a standard practice for agencies during RIF, and allows impacted employees to accept a vacant position that the agency is looking to fill, instead of being separated from the agency.

The employee said the agency’s decision to make new hires, rather than reinstate staff who took DRP or give RIF’d employees an opportunity to accept a new job, will drive up agency spending and make the agency less prepared for the filing season.

“We had hired these people in the last two years — tons of them — and we had given them hiring incentives to take these positions. Now we’re not going to hire them back. They’ve completed all their training. They were ready to hit the ground,” the second HR employee said. “We are not going to be able to train these people to do their jobs, because we don’t have the people left to train them.”

A fourth IRS employee, who also serves as a union official, told Federal News Network that they were furloughed after taking more than eight hours of leave during the two-week pay period — a violation of the agency’s new, unwritten leave policy for shutdown-exempt staff.

The employees said they were furloughed, even though their leave was approved months ago, long before the government shutdown.

“They called individuals who are on paid parental leave. These are individuals who just had children who were on paid parental leave for maternity leave, and told, ‘Guess what, you need to either come back or you’re going to be furloughed,’” the employee said.

The employee said an entire IRS team that investigates under-reported income has been furloughed, and that these furloughs could create major backlogs once the shutdown ends.

“There are more people leaving federal service now than I have ever seen, because they’ve been bullied into leaving,” they said.

The employee said they’ve seen RIF notices go out to several IRS IT employees, even though they all received outstanding performance reviews.

“Our systems are already outdated and lagging, and it’s going to be detrimental,” they said.

A fifth IRS employee, who works in IT, said the agency laid off tech workers “without vetting who is critical,” and that engineers who are “critical to the filing season” have been let go.

“It will be a huge impact,” the employee said.

Federal News Network’s Drew Friedman contributed reporting. 

If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email jheckman@federalnewsnetwork.com, or reach out on Signal at jheckman.29

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