The IRS is working on a plan that would see its 90,000-strong workforce reduced by as much as half, the AP's sources say. The cuts would come as part of President Trump's DOGE-led moves to pare down the size of the federal workforce, and would add to the roughly 7,000 probationary IRS employees who were laid off last month. One of them tells ProPublica the cuts are counterintuitive—because they'll cost the US so much money. As ProPublica points out, probationary employees aren't green or unskilled—they've simply been on the job less than a year. Dave Nershi is a case in point: He has a chemical and nuclear engineering background and had been with the IRS for nine months.
He was part of the Large Business and International division, which audits wealthy individuals and companies with more than $10 million in assets—think pharma, tech, and oil and gas companies. It's the IRS division with the highest ROI, which makes the cuts there all the more perplexing to insiders. The division counted petroleum engineers and computer scientists among its ranks, people with specialized knowledge who could wade through complicated returns and determine whether certain tax credits and breaks were properly claimed. As ProPublica reports, "With the help of people like Nershi, the IRS could recoup millions and sometimes more than a billion dollars on a single tax return."
Indeed, on the day he was laid off, Nershi was finishing a report that he says would have resulting in the US getting several times his low-six-figure salary in adjusted taxes; the report went unfiled. One engineer who is still with the IRS says their team of fewer than 10 people recouped $5 billion in adjusted taxes over the last four years. "By firing us, you're going to cut down on how much revenue the country brings in," Nershi says. "This was not about saving money." An estimated 120 of the division's 260 engineers are thought to have already been terminated. (More IRS stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
