By Nathan Layne
(Reuters) – The U.S. Internal Revenue Service will lay off about 6,700 employees on Thursday, a person familiar with the matter said, a restructuring that could strain the tax-collecting agency’s resources during the critical tax-filing season.
The workers being cut are probationary employees who have typically been at the agency for less than one to two years, and enjoy fewer protections than longer-term workers. The IRS has a total of roughly 100,000 employees.
The reductions at the IRS come amid a broader slashing of personnel across the federal government at the directive of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who is spearheading an unprecedented effort to shrink the bureaucracy.
Like other agencies, the IRS was ordered last week by the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees federal hiring, to dismiss all probationary employees.
But the IRS has taken a more careful approach than most other agencies due to concerns about squeezing resources with the April 15 tax filing deadline just two months away. The IRS remains busy for weeks after the deadline, processing returns and refunds for taxpayers.
Roughly 6,600 probationary IRS employees will be kept on to work through the tax filing season, according to the person familiar with the matter, with staff engaged in customer service and taxpayer advocacy spared for now from the cuts.
Some senior IRS executives remain concerned, however, about whether the agency will be able to process returns in a timely and efficient manner, the person familiar with the matter said.
The IRS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The layoffs will impact a range of roles including revenue agents, auditors and IT specialists across the country, with workers in New York, California, Georgia and Tennessee among the hardest hit, the person familiar with the matter said.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in New York and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Chris Reese and Lincoln Feast.)
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