The US Internal Revenue Service is reportedly gearing up to layoff thousands of workers in the coming days, media reports said. This decision could result in leaving the tax-collecting agency short of resources during the tax-filing season. The job cuts are not limited to the IRS but have impacted employees across several federal agencies. Reportedly, over 10,000 government staff have been fired so far. 

Citing sources in the know, Reuters reported that the US federal agency could be looking at firing multiple employees, as the administration under US President Donald Trump looks into an overhaul of the government agencies.

Layoffs To Target Probationary Employees

The report said that officials from the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees hiring in federal agencies, ordered all agencies on Thursday to let go of their probationary employees. Notably, workers on probation are new to their positions and don’t enjoy the complete job security protections available for federal employees.

It remained unclear how many employees exactly the IRS would layoff, however, the report noted that the job cuts will target all probationary employees who didn’t resign under the buyout, which has now been closed. The buyout offered by the Trump government is now closed. The buyout allowed individuals to resign voluntarily and were accepted by roughly 75,000 employees.

The layoffs are also expected to impact employees who have not been identified as essential to get through the tax season. The federal return filing deadline is April 15, 2025.

Notably, the IRS saw an increase in its workforce under former President Joe Biden to reach nearly 100,000 people, including almost 16,000 probationary workers. Biden tried to strengthen the agency’s operations, including its ability to audit corporations and wealthy taxpayers.

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Restructuring Across Federal Government Agencies

The layoffs are a part of the President Trump and his adviser Elon Musk's campaign to restructure the federal government and cut back on the bureaucracy radically. On Friday, more than 9,500 workers were fired from several federal departments such as Interior, Veteran Affairs, Energy, Agriculture and Health and Human Services.

The President has justified this overhaul citing that the federal government is too bloated, efficient, and ripe with waste and fraud. Apart from the job cuts, Trump and Musk have also tried to cut down civil-service protections for career employees, frozen most of the foreign aid from the US and attempted to close some official agencies like the US Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the report noted.

As part of the layoffs, over half of probationary workers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and many others at the National Institutes of Health have been forced out of their jobs, the report said citing sources. Notably, the US Forest Service has also fired nearly 3,400 recent hires, the news agency reported.