BobKamman
Level 15
‎02-14-2025 05:38 PM

From the Washington Post:

The Trump administration is expected to begin laying off thousands of employees at the Internal Revenue Service, six people briefed on the matter said, as billionaire Elon Musk’s team begins to target tax collections.

Treasury officials have discussed laying off roughly 9,000 employees still in their probationary period as part of broader dismissals across the government of recently hired workers, according to the six people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal conversations. That number could not be immediately confirmed, and spokespeople both for the IRS and Treasury declined to comment. The cuts could start as soon as Friday.

The layoffs are likely targeting tax collection, several of the people briefed on the matter said. Indeed, associates of Musk’s team are beginning to meet with high-ranking IRS officials about what could prove dramatic changes to the tax agency. Gavin Kliger, a software engineer now working at the IRS, met with Ken Corbin, the IRS’s chief of taxpayer services, and Heather Maloy, the agency’s top enforcement official, during his first day at the agency’s headquarters Thursday, according to several of the people familiar with the meetings.

...The IRS has said publicly that personnel critical to the tax filing season are ineligible for the “deferred resignation” plan that encouraged federal personnel to quit. That has fueled speculation that the cuts to IRS personnel will be concentrated among the agency’s tax collection staff, which could reduce the amount of revenue brought into federal coffers even as Musk calls for a reduced deficit.

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