Trump Fires 1,300 IRS Workers as Shutdown Layoffs Begin (3)

The Trump administration has begun firing about 1,300 workers at the IRS as it tries to leverage mass layoffs in the standoff over government funding in Congress.

A source familiar with the matter said the employees will be fired across all divisions and include both those furloughed and still working during the shutdown. The agency when selecting who to layoff identified many people who do back office work like scheduling, training, and communications, the source said. A second source earlier confirmed the layoffs began Friday.

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, who has long vowed to slash the federal workforce, posted on social media that reductions in force, or RIFS, had begun broadly across the government.

Unions are already asking for a judge to block the move.

American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, Director of Advocacy Andrew Huddleston said in a declaration seeking a temporary restraining order filed Friday that he heard from “credible sources” that John York, assistant secretary for management at Treasury, was directed to “issue 1,300 RIF notices across the Treasury Department today.”

Huddleston said he was informed there were “human resources staff from the Internal Revenue Service who have been detailed to the broader Treasury Department, who are currently working on those RIF notices.”

The IRS earlier this week furloughed nearly half of its workers when the government shutdown stretched past five business days, a move expected to delay the rollout of the GOP tax law and hurt taxpayer services as the agency prepares for filing season.

The IRS is by far the largest of Treasury’s nine bureaus, which also include the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Treasury Inspector General of Tax Administration.

About 40,000 workers deemed critical to IRS operations are still working through the shutdown. That includes those working on the tax law implementation, filing season, information technology, and criminal investigations.

The IRS, which began the year with a roster of about 100,000 employees, has seen its workforce slashed by about a quarter since then. Most of the employees left the agency through the Trump administration’s deferred resignation offer. The tax enforcement arm was hit the hardest, and some employees were brought back.

Just under 300 IRS employees received reduction-in-force notices this year, according to a July report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. They were in the civil rights and compliance, taxpayer experience, and equity, diversity, and inclusion offices.

In August, Treasury Secretary and acting IRS Commissioner Scott Bessent said the agency had no more reductions in force planned.

President Donald Trump and Vought have dangled the threat of mass layoffs as a negotiating tool in the fight in Congress over funding the government. Democrats on Capitol Hill decried the move as illegal and in particular a vendetta by Vought.

“This is a corrupt abuse of power. There is nothing about the Republican shutdown that suddenly nullifies legal protections for federal employees,” the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, said in a statement.

Republican members of the House Freedom Caucus cheered the move on social media.

The IRS has lacked consistent leadership amid the workforce reduction. Bessent is serving as the seventh commissioner since the beginning of the year, and many of the top agency positions are either vacant or held in acting capacities.

Frank Bisignano, commissioner of the Social Security Administration, is now running the IRS in the newly created CEO position, Treasury announced earlier this week.