President Trump is planning to gut the work force while trying to turn the I.R.S. into a more political agency.
Beth Crowell …had spent much of her career as an accountant for large corporations, gaining intimate knowledge about how they do — and sometimes don’t — pay the taxes they owe. …She hoped to put her skills to a new use. She wanted to help collect more money for the federal government.
Not long after joining last July, she had her chance. Ms. Crowell, 64, joined a team that had started an audit of a company earning roughly $3 billion a year. The I.R.S. had never examined the firm before, Ms. Crowell said, because the agency hadn’t had enough employees with the skills for such complex cases. “They’re a large multinational company, and it is not a normal thing to not have been examined,” she said, declining to name the firm.
By hiring Ms. Crowell and thousands of other experienced tax professionals like her last year, the I.R.S. was trying to fill those gaps and rebuild its ability to enforce tax laws after years of decay. The effort was expected to help the United States recoup billions in additional tax revenue.
Then the layoffs started. With Trump administration targeting recent hires across the government, the terminations hit particularly hard in Ms. Crowell’s division, large business and international. Many of the more than 7,000 people laid off from the I.R.S. so far worked in her department.
As a result, the I.R.S. may struggle even more with its basic mission of collecting taxes. Work-intensive investigations into large businesses and rich Americans could decline, a drop in enforcement that would add to the deficit even as Elon Musk says his team is helping narrow it.
The audit Ms. Crowell was in the middle of conducting is now adrift. Five of the nine people working on it, including Ms. Crowell, were laid off. What she called a slam-dunk case for the I.R.S. may not be finished.
“We were going to work through these issues and have it done in an effective professional and collaborative manner,” she said. “All of the momentum we had is gone. I’m not sure they’re going to be positioned and have the support they need to restructure and reconvene to overcome all of this.”
Firing probationary employees like Ms. Crowell was just the beginning of President Trump’s far-reaching agenda for the I.R.S. The administration is preparing budget cuts and further layoffs that could ultimately force the I.R.S. to shed as much as half of its 100,000-person work force — a drastic reduction that could mean many Americans face less scrutiny, and receive less help, on their taxes. At the same time, Mr. Trump is asserting more political control over an agency that has historically been insulated from changes in leadership at the White House.
Soon after the election, Mr. Trump chose Billy Long, a former Republican congressman and vocal supporter of the president, to lead the I.R.S. The choice of Mr. Long was unusual. He’d never run a large organization and his only background in tax consisted of pitching small businesses on a fraud-riddled tax credit. And by deciding to replace Daniel Werfel, then the head of I.R.S., years before the end of his term in 2027, Mr. Trump was upending the norm that commissioners of the I.R.S. stay in the role even as a new president comes into office.
Amanda Musgrave, 41, showed up to work expecting to be laid off quickly. She had started working at the massive I.R.S. campus in Austin, Texas, last June, so she knew she was vulnerable. Mrs. Musgrave had enjoyed the job and was frustrated that it had to end….
Musgrave has a lingering feeling that the layoffs directed by Mr. Musk’s team would create more government waste — not reduce it. Not only might Americans find it easier to avoid paying all of the taxes they owe, but all of the time and money the I.R.S. spent on hiring her and thousands of others were ultimately for nothing.
“I’m appalled my tax dollars were wasted on getting all those employees trained, and they didn’t even get the chance to get out of their probationary period,” she said.
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