WASHINGTON — As the Trump administration moves forward with reportedly firing more than 6,000 employees at the Internal Revenue Service on Thursday, tax policy experts and Democratic lawmakers are warning most Americans to brace for the negative consequences to come — except for super rich people, who will face even less accountability for not paying their taxes.
Everyday people filing their tax returns and awaiting their refunds are going to be hurt the most by President Donald Trump’s “very arbitrary and haphazard” slashing of IRS workers, said Vanessa Williamson, senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings and the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
“We can expect Americans to experience a return to slower refunds, to longer waits on hold, to dropped calls,” said Williamson. “It’s going to have a real impact on customer service ― right as taxes are due this year.”
The drastic cuts at the IRS, an agency with about 100,000 employees, are in line with Trump’s broader efforts to significantly reduce the size of all federal agencies through hasty, mostly indiscriminate firings that appear to be illegal. Several groups are currently in court suing the administration on behalf of federal employees.
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
People already know what happens when you slash employees at the IRS because the agency was massively understaffed in the 2010s, Williamsonsaid, and the result was that the agency simply didn’t have customer service workers to pick up phones to answer people’s questions about things like how to file or what to do if you were facing identity theft.
The IRS has already been hampered by Trump’s hiring freeze. The fact that the president is now firing thousands of people in the middle of tax season means “there’s every reason to expect that essential functions could be compromised,” said Williamson.
The rollout of mass firings at the IRS didn’t seem to be going well, either. One IRS employee in Texas said her entire team of 30 people was told Thursday they were all being let go, but nobody received any official notice of termination. After waiting around all day, they were told there was glitch in the system, and that everyone had to turn in their equipment and go home to await their termination letter being delivered by expedited mail.
“It’s a mess. Lot of tears,” said this federal employee, who requested anonymity as she may be pursuing legal action for being illegally fired.
“We have been treated horrendously. You can have an opinion about whether what’s happening [with mass government firings] is good or bad ― I think it’s bad ― but the way it’s gone about is awful,” she said. “We are Americans, too. We are taxpayers. We have lives, we have mortgages, we have families.”
President Donald Trump is firing thousands of IRS employees, which will mean delayed tax refunds to millions of Americans in addition to long waits on hold for anyone with tax-related questions for the IRS. via Associated Press
Most of the Trump administration’s cuts will disproportionately affect the IRS’s ability to carry out enforcement, said Williamson, which translates to “a feast” for wealthy tax evaders.
“When you underpay and understaff the IRS, the agency doesn’t have the power or the resources it needs to go after wealthy tax evaders with their high-priced lawyers,” she said. “So the result is, of course, a disaster for revenue. It is called the Internal Revenue Service for a reason. You cut the IRS, and you will get less revenue.”
Nearly 1,000 millionaires didn’t even bother to file their tax returns for several years, despite owing as much as $34 billion in taxes, according to a 2023 analysis by the Senate Finance Committee. All told, U.S. tax evasion by millionaires and billionaires tops $150 billion every year, the IRS chief said last year.
The Texas-based IRS employee said her team members, all of whom were just fired, work exclusively on tax compliance for the ultra-wealthy.
“We audit tax returns of people who die and have estates valued at over $14 million. We’re not auditing everyday, middle-class Americans,” she said. “We’re going after high-dollar people who are not compliant with tax responsibilities.”
“I’ve sworn an oath to the Constitution,” she added. “In my time at the IRS, I have not met a single person who is not passionate about serving the American people. That is number one on our minds every day when we come in.”
On Capitol Hill, Democrats fumed about the corruption on display with Trump’s attacks on the IRS.
“Purging thousands of IRS workers in the middle of tax filing season is another act of plain corruption designed to benefit Musk, Trump, and their wealthy friends,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who represents a Virginia district with large numbers of federal employees, said in a statement.
“These firings are likely illegal, and make the federal government less responsive to the American people,” said Beyer. “This is stupid, destructive, and corrupt.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, led Democrats in a letter sent Tuesday to top administration officials urging them not to follow through with mass firings at the IRS, warning of their “catastrophic impact on the filing season and the ability of Americans to quickly get tax refunds and assistance” when filing taxes this year.
“It is nearly inevitable that this hiring freeze, compounded by layoffs and further reductions in staff mandated as a result of Elon Musk’s unprecedented power grab, will delay refunds and degrade taxpayer service,” reads their letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, among others. “Millions of Americans plan their budgets around timely refunds every filing season. These reckless decisions on the part of Elon Musk and the Trump administration will likely cause serious financial hardship for people across the country.”
Wyden said Thursday it shouldn’t be surprising that Trump and Musk, the billionaire and Trump loyalist overseeing the administration’s mass governmental cuts, want to gut the tax enforcement agency.
“Donald Trump is a known tax cheat, and he and Elon Musk clearly believe they are above the law, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise their IRS layoffs will hobble tax enforcement among the ultra-wealthy,” he said in a statement.
The Oregon senator added that he is “extremely concerned” that one of Trump’s reasons for slashing employees at the IRS is so Republicans can shut down the IRS’s Direct File program, which offers people a free and secure way to file their taxes online. The Biden administration launched the program last year. Before it existed, most people had to pay to use other services to file their taxes.
Getting rid of the Direct File program would “put American taxpayers back at the mercy of the tax software giants who’ve been ripping them off for too long,” said Wyden. Beyond that, he said he is bracing for Trump and Republicans in Congress to make even more cuts to the IRS in the coming weeks and months that will hurt taxpayers.
“When that happens,” he said, “Americans can blame Trump, Musk, and Republicans for every additional day their refunds are delayed and every additional minute they spend waiting on hold with the IRS.”
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