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Planned cuts are part of drastic effort to downsize

government

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Cuts will focus on those hired during Biden administration

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Probationary workers needed for processing tax returns

will stay

By Nathan Layne

Feb 20 (Reuters) - The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is

expected to fire about 6,700 employees on Thursday, a person

familiar with the matter said, eliminating roughly 7% of the

tax-collecting agency's workforce in the midst of the critical

tax-filing season.

The planned cuts are part of President Donald Trump's

radical downsizing effort that has targeted bank regulators,

forest workers, rocket scientists and tens of thousands of other

government employees. The effort is being led by tech

billionaire Elon Musk, Trump's biggest campaign donor.

The planned layoffs at the IRS would largely target workers

at the 95,000-person agency who were hired as part of an

expansion under former Democratic President Joe Biden, who had

sought to expand enforcement efforts on wealthy taxpayers.

Trump's Republicans have blasted that effort, saying without

evidence that middle-class Americans and small business owners

would be the ones hardest hit.

The workers being cut are in their probationary period and

enjoy fewer protections than career employees.

The IRS, which has not confirmed the planned cuts, has taken

a more careful approach to downsizing than other agencies given

that it is in the middle of its busiest period, with the April

15 tax filing deadline just two months away.

The 2025 tax filing season opened on January 27, with the

IRS expecting over 140 million individual tax year 2024 returns

by the federal filing deadline.

The dismissals targeted employees involved in a variety of

roles, ranging from revenue agents to specialized auditors to IT

specialists across all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington,

D.C., according to the person familiar with the matter.

The IRS will retain several thousand probationary employees

deemed critical for processing tax returns, including those

involved in supporting and advocating for taxpayers, the source

said.

The White House has not said how many of the nation's 2.3

million civil-service workers it wants to fire and has given no

numbers on the mass layoffs. Roughly 75,000 took a buyout offer

last week.

The campaign has delighted Republicans for culling a federal

workforce they view as bloated, corrupt and insufficiently loyal

to Trump, while also taking aim at government agencies that

regulate big business and collect taxes -- including those that

oversee Musk's companies SpaceX, Tesla and Neuralink.

Musk's Department of Government Efficiency team has also

cancelled contracts worth about $8.5 billion involving foreign

aid, diversity training and other initiatives opposed by Trump.

Both men have set a goal of cutting at least $1 trillion

from the $6.7 trillion federal budget, though Trump has said he

will not touch popular benefit programs that make up roughly

one-third of that total.

Democratic critics say Trump is exceeding his constitutional

authority and hacking away at popular and critical government

programs at the expense of legions of middle-class families.