Trump-Musk Plan to Gut IRS Denounced as 'Blatant Power Grab'

Following reporting that the Internal Revenue Service is preparing to cut as much as 50% of its workforce, advocates are sounding the alarm that those cuts would negatively impact regular Americans who pay taxes and diminish the agency's ability to audit wealthy tax evaders.

The plans to drastically reduce personnel at the IRS was first reported Tuesday by The New York Times, which cited unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

A reduction in force of tens of thousands of workers would render the agency "dysfunctional," John Koskinen, a former IRS commissioner, told The Associated Press.

The planned staff reductions at the IRS are part of a larger targeting of the federal workforce by the Trump administration. Billionaire Elon Musk, who U.S. President Donald Trump has deputized to help oversee the slashing of federal personnel and programs, has been central to that effort.

The Times reported that the Department of Government Efficiency "has taken a keen interest in the IRS in recent weeks" and two representatives from DOGE have been working from the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. "They have pushed for access to agency databases, including, most recently, one that has information about the agency's contractors," per the Times.

Ian Gary, executive director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition, blasted the reported plans to reduce IRS staff by half.

“A fair, transparent, and well-funded tax system is vital to a functioning democratic society," said Gary in a statement on Tuesday. "These cuts are also likely to disproportionately affect recent investments and hiring in the tax agency that have greatly improved its capacity to audit wealthy tax cheats and unscrupulous corporations. At the same time, such drastic staffing cuts will affect service levels for ordinary Americans."

Gary also said that the planned cuts "represent an existential threat to the revenues needed to operate the federal government."

The agency that nearly every working American adult interacts with each year has already experienced workforce reductions. There were some 100,000 workers at the IRS as of mid-January, according to theTimes. However, more than 7,000 probationary IRS employees have already been laid off, and thousands more have taken Musk's offer to resign.

"Those cuts, as well as normal attrition, are expected to count toward the Trump administration's goal of halving the number of people who work at the IRS," per the Times.

The executive director of the group Americans For Tax Fairness, David Kass, also denounced the news of the potential cuts: "These layoffs will significantly impair the agency's ability to answer the phones and provide good service to taxpayers and hamper the agency's ability to investigate wealthy and powerful tax cheats."

Kass also called the move a "blatant power grab—led by the Trump administration and the world's wealthiest individual— to deliberately weaken the IRS to further enrich themselves and their billionaire allies."

It was already known that the Trump administration's next move is to carry out mass "reduction in force" plans across agencies.

Last week the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management sent a memo to agency leaders giving them guidance on how to come up with "large-scale" reduction in force and reorganization plans that are due March 13. However, according to The Associated Press, "it is unclear whether the White House will approve the IRS' reorganization plan and over what period of time it would be implemented."