President Donald Trump marked his return to the White House on Jan. 20 with a slew of executive orders, including an indefinite hiring freeze at the IRS. Naturally, with the 2025 tax season well underway, you might be concerned that this situation might delay your tax refund — but there’s one filing choice you should be worried about a lot more.
Amid the more headline-grabbing moves Trump made on his first day — including a delay of the contentious TikTok ban and the rolling back of clean energy initiatives — he also ordered a hiring freeze across the federal government. This, he claimed, was a cost-saving move while the Elon Musk-fronted advisory body, the Department of Government Efficiency, looks for ways to cut government spending.
The order had special language reserved for the IRS, making the hiring freeze indefinite. And it came only a week before the start of tax season on Jan. 27, when the agency will start accepting tax returns. On average, the IRS processes about 140 million returns a year and issues refunds averaging around $3,100 apiece, but this freeze on hiring has prompted new concerns that the agency will face difficulties handling the load this year.
Read on to find out if this hiring freeze might impact your tax return. For more on tax season, find out how Direct File has been “enhanced” this year and see if your state has lowered its income tax rate.
The hiring freeze ordered by Trump specifies that “no Federal civilian position that is vacant at noon on January 20, 2025, [to] be filled” for 90 days. This period will last past the typical April 15 tax filing deadline, and on top of that, the order singled out the IRS for an indefinite hiring freeze.
“This memorandum shall remain in effect for the IRS until the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Director of OMB [Office of Management and Budget] and the Administrator of USDS [United States Digital Service], determines that it is in the national interest to lift the freeze,” the order states.
If the IRS has any concerns about its ability to process tax returns in the next few months, it hasn’t said so in an official capacity. In a post to LinkedIn, however, Melanie Lauridsen, the vice president for tax policy and advocacy for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, suggested that the freeze should have no significant impact on the IRS’ ability to fill seasonal roles for tax filing season, as that sort of hiring should already have been done.
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