Long Commutes, Fear of the Future: What Made IRS Attorneys Quit

The mandated return to the office was frustrating for them. So were the Trump administration’s staff cuts and hollowing out of leadership. Then came a fight for them to get permission to pay for travel, expert witnesses, even parking, from people who knew little about their work.

When IRS attorneys put those together with fear of what the future might hold—that sooner or later they’d be required to do something they couldn’t accept—it was enough to make some head for the door.

”It was the greatest job in the world and I never would have left, except for what seemed to be on the horizon,” said an attorney who left the IRS’s Office of Chief Counsel for a law firm.

“You could just tell there wasn’t going to be an interest in investing in the organization to make it successful,” said another attorney who left for a “more exciting opportunity.”

Six former Office of Chief Counsel attorneys spoke with Bloomberg Tax on the condition they not be named so they could talk freely about their experiences at the IRS and what prompted them to leave. They’re among many departing attorneys who had to withdraw from representing the IRS in cases against taxpayers in US Tax Court—something that’s raised concerns about slowing the progress of cases and curbing tax-enforcement efforts.

An IRS spokesperson didn’t provide comment.

Also Read: IRS Attorney Exodus Gives Companies a Leg Up in Court Cases

Chart: Andrea Vittorio/Bloomberg Tax

Big Holes at Chief Counsel

More than 350 staff members left the Office of Chief Counsel from January to early June, a decline of nearly 13%, according to the IRS National Taxpayer Advocate. Others have left since.

The changes have damaged the sense of mission that led many people to want to work for the federal government, said Gil Rothenberg, a former chief of the appellate section at the Justice Department’s Tax Division, which like the Office of Chief Counsel represents the IRS in court and is itself in the midst of an upheaval.

“This is a completely new environment, and I think that is scary for people who are there,” said Rothenberg, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and American University law schools.

The former IRS attorneys back that up.

“To be honest, I thought I would retire with the federal government. I never thought I would leave,” one attorney said. But the Trump administration’s changes brought “just a lot of uncertainties. No one knew what was going to happen.” When another job opportunity arose, it “was just something that I couldn’t pass up.”

For some, the IRS’s dictate that employees return to the office full time in March was the biggest factor. One attorney had a lengthy commute, and “I really enjoyed my job, and I didn’t want to leave, so it was a really hard decision. But I just couldn’t do it.”

Others were concerned about restrictions on internal spending that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency imposed at the IRS and other agencies.

DOGE froze government spending cards as part of its cost-cutting efforts, and you had to “fight through the process” of getting those limits raised when that was needed, said the former attorney who called their IRS job “the greatest job in the world.” It was ”making the working conditions so inflexible that you don’t want to do that kind of work.”

The dictates were handed down from above: A former attorney’s bosses and their bosses—the people who conveyed information to rank-and-file employees—were often “bombarded” with questions to which they didn’t have answers. They “were all put in a very tricky position without a lot of knowledge or guidance,” the former attorney said.

Morale inside the Office of Chief Counsel has suffered as a result, say former attorneys who remain in touch with their colleagues still at the agency. “I think a lot of people are looking for opportunities to get out,” one former attorney said.