Bloomberg, IRS to Lose 22% of Taxpayer Service Workers After Trump Purge:

The IRS should quickly hire thousands of new taxpayer service employees so it’s prepared for next year’s filing season, given the agency is losing more than one-fifth of those workers under Trump administration-directed cuts, the National Taxpayer Advocate said in her mid-year report.

The Trump administration should lift its hiring freeze and the agency needs direct-hire authority to fill key roles by the end of the summer ahead of the 2026 season, Erin Collins, the national taxpayer advocate who runs an independent office inside the IRS, said. The IRS’s Taxpayer Services division, which helps consumers with questions on their taxes and processes returns, is expected to lose about 22% of its 42,134 workers.

“Especially in the short term, the number of total IRS employees is less important than the number of trained IRS employees,” Collins said. She took the position during the first Trump administration.

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency directed a series of cuts to the federal employees—including the IRS, which by the end of the year will see a roughly 26% drop to its workforce of over 100,000, the report said. The exits came amid a slew of incentives prodding workers to leave, outright firings, and internal boundary-pushing decisions.

Washington Post, IRS Staff Losses Pose ‘Risks’ to Next Tax Filing Season, Report Warns

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