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Just one day after the April 15 federal income tax filing deadline, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) revealed plans for massive workforce reductions, according to internal documents obtained by FNN and Politico. The agency is preparing to shrink its staff from around 100,000 to between 60,000 and 70,000 employees.
This move is part of a far-reaching campaign by the Trump administration to gut the federal workforce and dismantle essential public institutions. Agencies not directly tied to military-intelligence apparatus, domestic and border policing, or the increasing of corporate profits are being targeted for destruction. Over 70,000 federal employees have already accepted voluntary buyouts, and tens of thousands more are expected to be laid off in the coming months.
At the IRS, over 20,000 have already taken buyouts. Internal memos make clear that these cuts are being made with full awareness of their impact. One such memo stated, “taxpayer services and compliance will need to be trimmed,” a clear signal that enforcement against wealthy tax cheats will be scaled back.
An IRS worker, speaking anonymously to the World Socialist Web Site, described the consequences of the cuts:
The cuts will have a profound impact on tax enforcement, which will make it easier for millionaire and billionaire tax cheats to avoid detection. Millionaires and billionaires tend to have very complicated transaction structures and can have tax returns well over a hundred pages long. They will no doubt be the primary beneficiaries of these cuts.
The worker went on to explain that the cuts will likely lead to a broader fiscal crisis:
This will most likely force the government to make up the shortfall from the rest of the population. Presumably the administration plans to do this through tariffs, which, unlike income taxes, are not progressive. Billionaires and the poor all pay the same amount for the higher cost of goods resulting from tariffs. Another outcome will be poor customer service and the wasteful payment of more fraudulent subsidies, the IRS pays out a lot of subsidies, since there will be fewer people monitoring things.
The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents IRS employees, warned in a statement to The Hill that enforcement is being specifically targeted:
Roughly 70 percent of the personnel cuts thus far have been in enforcement, which will make it easier to avoid detection for the millionaire and billionaire tax cheats who evade an estimated $150 billion in taxes every year. It is estimated that every dollar cut from enforcement costs five to nine dollars in revenue. So if Musk tries to cut $10 billion from IRS enforcement spending, he will be risking $50-90 billion in lost revenue each year
In other words, the entire purpose of the layoffs is to facilitate tax fraud by the wealthy and eliminate the programs their taxes help fund.
While tax enforcement is being slashed, sweeping cuts to social spending are underway. The Trump administration is backing $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid and roughly $230 billion from food stamps. On top of this, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is proposing to cut $40 billion in mandatory spending, which would inevitably include cuts to federal worker pensions and healthcare.
Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” which spearheading attacks on the federal workforce, is also demanding direct access to tax records for every American. This massive privacy violation would enable the White House to use tax records to facilitate roundups and other repressive measures against immigrants and political opponents of the regime.
This measure, aimed at establishing a presidential dictatorship, has prompted a wave of resignations of top IRS officials, including two acting IRS commissioners since Trump took office. The agency’s chief information officer also announced just before the April 15 filing deadline plans to step down at the end of the month.
According to the Associated Press, the administration is also attempting to eliminate the IRS Direct File system—a free e-filing option for ordinary taxpayers. By undermining this system, the government seeks to make the filing process more difficult and increase profits for private tax preparers.
Latest round of cuts
The layoffs at the IRS are only one part of a much broader purge of the federal workforce. April 14 was the deadline for all federal agencies to submit “reductions in force” (RIF) plans for the second round of layoffs. According to the New York Times, there have been at least 56,230 confirmed job cuts and about 76,100 employees who have taken buyouts, with a further 146,320 or more being currently planned. This is approximately equal to 10 percent of the total federal workforce.
Other recent cuts include:
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS): 20,000 workers are being eliminated through a mix of layoffs and buyouts. The CDC and FDA are each losing about 20 percent of their staff. Two-thirds of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has been eliminated.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD): Up to 50 percent of staff are being laid off; some areas may lose as much as 75 percent.
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA): Over 1,000 probationary workers have been dismissed, including researchers working on mental health, cancer, addiction, and prosthetics.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): 388 employees have been terminated.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): 880 employees have been laid off, including workers from the National Hurricane Center and Storm Prediction Center, making the country more vulnerable to severe death and destruction from extreme weather.
Department of Energy (DOE): 1,200–2,000 layoffs affecting the National Nuclear Security Administration and other critical areas.
AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC): Over 2,000 volunteers have dismissed due to “programmatic circumstances beyond your control,” the agency said in a memo. This decision impacts disaster relief and community service projects nationwide.
At the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), staffing cuts have been so severe that the agency was forced to hire dozens of contractors just to manage travel and scheduling for inspectors after the entire travel operations division was laid off at the start of the month. The move threatens to cripple in-person inspections of the food supply and even strand inspectors who were out in the field at the time of the cuts.
Despite the severity of these attacks, federal unions like the NTEU have taken no serious action. Upholding anti-democratic laws which ban federal workers from striking, their response has been limited to letters and statements, even as the administration tears up union contracts through executive orders. While federal workers are being stripped of their jobs and protections, union officials remain committed to a strategy of appeasement and legal appeals.
This assault on public workers cannot be defeated by lobbying or legal action. It requires a mass mobilization of the working class. Federal workers must link their struggle with broader movements of workers in the US and internationally, to defend the right to secure employment, adequate social services, and democratic rights.
Such a struggle can only be organized from below. As the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) wrote in a February statement:
The committees the IWA-RFC is calling for will be the means through which federal workers can communicate between workplaces, exchange information and coordinate joint action. Through the expansion of rank-and-file committees in every workplace, workers can build support and prepare strike action to oppose mass firings, the destruction of social programs and the privatization of public services.
These committees will unite federal workers with immigrant workers fighting deportation, educators and healthcare workers resisting cuts, and industrial workers battling exploitation and unsafe conditions, forging a common struggle against the attacks on the entire working class.