WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — The Internal Revenue Service will lay off 6,700 workers in Washington, D.C., and around the U.S. beginning Thursday, a government official told NewsNation.
As of May 2024, the agency had more than 94,000 employees. About 1 out of every 7 of them have been on the job for a year or less. Another 1 of 7 have been employed there for one to two years.
The layoffs are part of the administration’s intensified efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce through the Department of Government Efficiency by ordering agencies to lay off nearly all probationary employees who have not yet gained civil service protection. They come despite IRS employees involved in the 2025 tax season being told earlier this month that they would not be allowed to accept a buyout offer from the Trump administration until mid-May after the taxpayer filing deadline.
One employee told NewsNation local affiliate KDVR she had been worried all week about being fired.
“A majority of us are very sad with what’s going on,” she said. “Most of us don’t even know how we’re going to make our mortgage payment or rent payments, how we’re even going to put food on the table.”
It’s unclear how the layoffs may affect tax collection services this year. As the nation’s revenue collector, the IRS was tasked during the Biden administration with targeting high-wealth tax evaders for an additional stream of income to the U.S., which is $36 trillion in debt. By the end of 2024, the IRS collected over $1.3 billion in back taxes from wealthy tax dodgers.
In addition to the planned layoffs, the Trump administration intends to lend IRS workers to the Department of Homeland Security to assist with immigration enforcement. In a letter sent earlier this month, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to borrow IRS workers to help with ongoing immigration crackdown efforts.
Representatives from the IRS and U.S. Treasury did not respond to requests for comment from NewsNation.
DOGE eyeing more cuts
A team from DOGE visited the Pentagon earlier this week and got lists of probationary workers within the department.
It’s still unknown how many employees could potentially be laid off, but uniformed military personnel are not expected to be affected, sources told The Associated Press.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has already come out saying he supports cuts to the department. He’s told Pentagon officials that the agency needs to find around $50 billion in cuts, which is 8% of the defense budget of more than $800 billion.
Meanwhile, NASA announced that 5% of its workforce accepted a federal buyout offer. About 77,000 federal employees accepted a deferred resignation offer spearheaded by the Trump administration, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told NewsNation earlier this month.
Labor unions representing hundreds of thousands of federal workers sued over the layoffs, but U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper decided Thursday he could not grant a motion to temporarily block them. He said unions should file a suit with a Federal Labor Relations Board.
This ruling serves as a temporary one as the case makes its way through the courts. It comes on the heels of another federal judge denying a lawsuit filed by 14 attorneys general in democratic states that accused Elon Musk of lacking authority to direct those mass firings of federal workers.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.