By Joseph Wilkinson
New York Daily News
(TNS)
An estimated 6,700 IRS workers were fired Thursday, in the middle of tax season as the agency prepares to deal with 140 million tax returns.
The purge largely targeted newer “probationary” employees who have fewer protections than long-term workers, Reuters reported.
President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who is overseeing the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have promised to cut costs and have followed through by firing thousands of government workers and offering buyouts to many more.
But Thursday’s move to can IRS employees, specifically tax collectors, will likely cost the government money, according to experts.
“For every $1 that the IRS spends on high-end enforcement activity, the agency collects $12 in uncollected taxes,” Yale Law professor Natasha Sarin told NPR.
Instead, cutting back on IRS personnel will undercut the agency’s ability to investigate complicated tax schemes, often undertaken by some of the nation’s wealthiest citizens.
The cuts “will ensure that the IRS is not going after the wealthy and is only an agency that’s really focused on the low income. It’s a travesty,” University of Pittsburgh tax law professor Philip Hackney, a former IRS lawyer, told Reuters.
While he was in office, former President Joe Biden made IRS funding a priority. The agency added thousands of jobs during his four years in charge.
But even Trump’s former IRS commissioner, Chuck Rettig, criticized the decision.
“An underfunded IRS significantly benefits unidentified, noncompliant taxpayers at the direct expense of compliant taxpayers,” Rettig, who led the agency from 2018-2022, wrote on LinkedIn.
_______
©2025 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.
Thanks for reading CPA Practice Advisor!
Subscribe Already registered? Log In
Need more information? Read the FAQs
Stacy Berndt February 24 2025 at 11:41 am
This is a very one sided and shallow view of the issue. Clear bias. slb