By Nathan Layne and Andy Sullivan
(Reuters) -A tearful executive at the U.S. Internal Revenue Service told staffers on Thursday that about 6,000 employees would be fired, a person familiar with the matter said, in a move that would eliminate roughly 6% of the agency’s workforce in the midst of the critical tax-filing season.
The 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.
Christy Armstrong, the IRS’ director of talent acquisition, teared up as she announced the layoffs on a phone call and told workers to support each other during a difficult time, said an employee on the call.
“She was pretty emotional,” the source said.
The layoffs are expected to total 6,700, according to a person familiar with the matter, and largely target workers at the agency hired as part of an expansion under Democratic President Joe Biden, who had sought to expand enforcement efforts on wealthy taxpayers. The agency now employs roughly 100,000 people, up from 80,000 when he took office.
Independent budget analysts estimate the expansion could boost government revenue and help narrow trillion-dollar budget deficits. Trump’s Republicans say the expansion would lead to more harassment of ordinary American taxpayers.
The workers being cut are in their probationary period and have fewer protections than career employees.
The IRS 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 IRS expects over 140 million individual returns by that deadline.
ALL 50 STATES
The dismissals target workers across all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., including hundreds at large offices in Pennsylvania, New York, Utah, California and Kentucky, according to people familiar with the matter.
Those fired include revenue agents, customer-service workers, independent specialists who hear appeals of tax disputes, and IT workers, the sources said.
The IRS will retain several thousand employees deemed critical for processing tax returns, including those involved in supporting and advocating for taxpayers, one 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 canceled 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.
Some agencies have struggled to comply with the rapid-fire directives Trump has issued since taking office a month ago. Workers that oversee the nation’s nuclear weapons have been fired and then recalled, while medicines and food exports have been stranded in warehouses by Trump’s freeze on foreign aid.
Contractors that do business with the government have furloughed workers as their contracts have been canceled.
Some workers were told they were fired for poor performance, despite receiving glowing reviews.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration told scientists to stop using the words “woman,” “disabled” and “elderly” in external communications, sources said. The White House said this was an error based on a misinterpretation of an order by the president.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne; additional reporting by Andy Sullivan; writing by Andy Sullivan, editing by Ross Colvin, Chizu Nomiyama and Bill Berkrot)