By Mark Weiner
syracuse.com
(TNS)
The IRS abruptly fired up to 10 employees in its Syracuse, NY office Thursday, part of a group of almost 7,000 agency workers let go by President Donald Trump’s administration at the start of tax season.
Those dismissed from the IRS office in downtown Syracuse included revenue officers and revenue agents, said a source who works in the office and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Workers found out they were losing their jobs only after their IRS email and computer access was terminated without notice overnight Thursday, the source said.
Those who arrived at work found their access cards to the IRS offices at One Park Place no longer worked. Managers who let the employees in to the building told them to pack up their belongings and leave, the source said.
“There’s a lot of crying and it’s not good,” the employee said Thursday morning. “People are at their desks crying and packing up their things. The managers are really in the dark and they’re very supportive. People who have been here 30 years say they’ve never seen anything like this.”
Officials at IRS headquarters in Washington did not respond to a request for comment about the mass layoffs.
The firings affected probationary workers with less than two years of service, whose jobs are not yet protected by civil service laws, the source said.
The cutbacks, from an office that includes at least 30 employees, eliminated the jobs of all but one revenue officer in Syracuse, the source said. Revenue officers collect unpaid tax bills and delinquent returns from a region that covers at least a dozen counties in Upstate New York.
Nationally, the IRS layoffs targeted almost 7,000 probationary employees, mostly in compliance departments, a source told The Associated Press. The duties of those employees included ensuring that taxpayers follow the tax code, file their returns and pay their taxes.
The layoffs are part of the Trump administration’s move to reduce the size of the federal workforce through the Department of Government Efficiency. Agencies have been ordered to fire nearly all probationary employees.
The IRS, plagued by labor shortages and antiquated computer systems, had ramped up hiring to go after tax cheats when Congress approved an $80 billion infusion to the agency in 2023. The IRS said it planned to hire 87,000 new employees to replace those who retired or quit in recent years.
But Republicans in Congress, unhappy with that boost, succeeded in taking away $20 billion from the IRS over the next two years. The money will be diverted to other nondefense programs.
It was not immediately clear how shrinking the IRS will help save money for the federal government.
The IRS announced in December that the extra funding approved by Congress had helped the agency recover $4.7 billion in back taxes.
The total included $1.3 billion from high-income taxpayers who had not paid overdue tax debts, $2.9 billion from investigations into drug trafficking and terrorist financing, and $475 million from criminal and civil cases linked to information provided by whistleblowers.
The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS employees, called Thursday’s dismissals “a recipe for economic disaster” and said it will fight the mass layoffs in court.
“In the middle of a tax filing season, when taxpayers expect prompt customer service and smooth processing of their tax returns, the administration has chosen to decimate the whole operation by sending dedicated civil servants to the unemployment lines,” Doreen Greenwald, the union’s national president, said in a statement.
Greenwald added, “These layoffs are arbitrary and unlawful, and NTEU will keep fighting until every wrongful termination is reversed.”
She said the layoffs targeted probationary employees, who are usually young people who decided to start their career in public service.
“They passed the IRS’ extensive background checks, received extensive training at taxpayer expense, delivering for the American people, and are now being told they are no longer valued,” Greenwald said.
Photo caption: The IRS fired about 10 employees at its Syracuse Taxpayer Assistance Center on Thursday Feb. 20, 2025.
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©2025 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit syracuse.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.
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