IRS employees expect to learn their layoff fate around Tax Day, their busiest time of the year [View all]

Source: CNN Politics

Published 6:15 PM EDT, Mon April 14, 2025


CNN — Internal Revenue Service workers are expecting to soon learn their employment fate, coinciding with Tuesday’s tax-filing deadline and their busiest week of the year. Two sources familiar with the matter said the agency will begin to announce individual decisions by the end of this week, spelling out who is spared and who is being laid off as part of the Trump administration’s plans to significantly slash the IRS’ workforce.

IRS employees in Kansas City, Missouri; Atlanta; and Chicago — some of the agency’s largest hubs outside Washington — said anxiety has been building around the week surrounding Tax Day. Not only because of the mammoth workload, they said, but because they had heard this is when the cuts would be announced.

The reduction-in-force plans are expected to take effect in the coming weeks, one IRS manager, who requested anonymity to discuss private deliberations, told CNN. The Trump administration is eyeing as much as a 20% reduction of the agency’s workforce, which would mean cutting roughly 20,000 jobs, CNN previously reported.

The planned slimdown in staff will come just as the IRS is processing tens of millions of tax returns, refunds, extensions, collections and payment plans. Some at the agency believe the timing is more than a coincidence. “It seems like the cruelty is the point,” one IRS employee said about the layoffs coming around Tuesday’s tax deadline, seen by the agency as its “Super Bowl.”

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/14/politics/irs-layoffs-tax-season/index.html