IRS workers 'paralyzed' by DOGE's massive cuts claim Elon Musk's budget busters are reshaping the agency
Workers at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are said to be completely 'paralyzed' in the middle of tax season as chaos reigns supreme following the arrival of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The tax-collecting agency that has long been a target for Republicans, is planning to eliminate 20% to 25% of its workforce by May 15, according to a person briefed on the agency's plans.
The agency has been thrown into turmoil with inside sources saying the future of America's tax collection itself is teetering on the edge of collapse.
The IRS had about 100,000 workers when Trump took office, meaning up to 25,000 are set to lose their jobs.
The 20% to 25% target includes the roughly 5,000 IRS employees who took a buyout last month and potentially 7,000 probationary workers who were fired, though court rulings could lead to the reinstatement of probationary staff, the person said.
'They just randomly drop by people's offices, demanding access to systems; they're bullying us and there's no discipline in what they are doing, which really worries me,' one IRS employee said during a hushed phone call with CNN.
'It's a clusterf***, and I can't believe no one is stepping in to do anything.'
It all began quietly on a gray morning in mid-February when Gavin Kliger, a 25-year-old tech wiz who was seemingly plucked straight from a Silicon Valley coding bootcamp.
Kliger marched into the IRS headquarters in Washington DC without so much as a security escort.
Stunned staffers say his mission was to seize control of the IRS's tax administration systems.
Within minutes, Kliger was reportedly demanding access to databases holding the sensitive financial data of millions of American taxpayers. That data is protected under some of the strictest confidentiality laws in the federal government.
'He just walked in like he owned the place as if decades of taxpayer trust, laws, and protections didn't matter,' a veteran IRS manager recalled.
Kliger was soon joined by Sam Corcos, a 36-year-old entrepreneur whose past achievements include designing diet apps.
Corcos was there to trim the fat off the IRS with 'delete' quickly becoming his favorite word.
Staffers say he looked to terminate almost all IRS programs funded for the current fiscal year — programs specifically designed to modernize the tax filing process and improve customer service for millions of Americans.
'They'll come in and say we're going to delete that initiative - 'delete' is one of their favorite terms,' an IRS employee said. '
'So, we are scrambling to figure out: Does Sam have that authority? Does Gavin have that authority? Did Treasury give them that authority?'
As the DOGE operatives dug in, the casualties began to mount.
By March, thousands of IRS employees had already been fired - everyone from from auditors to customer service reps - as DOGE pushed a sweeping plan to eliminate nearly 20% of the workforce before the May 15 deadline.
More than 110 taxpayer assistance offices are set to close, leaving vast swaths of the country without in-person help during the busiest tax season of the year.
An atmosphere of despair has now taken hold within the walls of IRS offices.
'It's now routine to see people crying in the office,' said one union leader outside Washington. 'Managers are walking around apologizing for firings they had no decision in.'
Another source put it more bluntly: 'We are paralyzed.'
Veteran tax experts are sounding the alarm about what they see as a deliberate gutting of the IRS, with profound consequences for the entire US government.
Nina Olson, who spent nearly two decades as the independent National Taxpayer Advocate, described the cuts as 'basically gutting the agency.'
'You've got a lot of new blood getting fired, that's supposed to be the future of the workforce,' Olson said to CNN.
'Then you've got the most skilled people, at the height of their institutional knowledge, leaving through retirement. None of this bodes well for the taxpayers.'
With processing returns and issuing refunds continuing on autopilot for now the real danger lies just beyond in the near future with crippling delays, skyrocketing customer service wait times, and a tax system more vulnerable to fraud and abuse.
The IRS's once-improving customer service stats are set to reverse as a result of the cut.
The average phone wait time, which had been brought down from 28 minutes in 2022 to just three minutes last year, will likely spiral back to pre-reform chaos.
'In many cases, those long wait times ended with a courtesy disconnect,' an IRS employee lamented. 'They just hung up on you - so we are going back to those days.'
The IRS leadership is itself in also in freefall.
After Biden-appointed commissioner Danny Werfel resigned on Inauguration Day, without waiting for the end of his five-year term, chaos reigned.
His acting successor retired mere weeks later, and Trump's nominee, former GOP Congressman Billy Long, still awaits Senate confirmation.
Melanie Krause, now acting head of the agency, has only three-and-a-half years of IRS experience under her belt.
So far, Elon Musk, has stayed quiet. GOP Rep. Pete Sessions brushed off Musk's role, saying Musk is 'trying to get the astronauts back from space' and is more interested in White House 'photo opportunities' than running the IRS - but the fingerprints of Musk's budget-busting ideology are everywhere.
In a Bloomberg op-ed, Werfel likened DOGE's brazen demands to 'the CEO of a bank walking into a branch and demanding access to all of the customers' safe-deposit boxes.'
Most chilling of all are allegations that DOGE's true mission may extend far beyond slashing budgets - toward weaponizing tax data against undocumented immigrants.
According to sources, DHS has circulated a memo asking the IRS for sweeping amounts of data on immigrants who used individual taxpayer identification numbers (ITINs) to pay taxes.
These include home addresses and employment information - data strictly protected under federal law.
Two IRS insiders say DOGE operatives are already searching for ways to facilitate these handovers - a move immigrant-rights advocates warn would lead to mass arrests and deportations, in violation of decades-old taxpayer privacy protections.
Two immigrant rights groups have sued the IRS and Treasury, warning that if DOGE succeeds, their members could face 'harm in the form of the arrest, detention, or other deprivations of liberty associated with the Trump Administration's stated intention to engage in mass actions against immigrants.'
As Americans rush to file taxes, most remain unaware that behind the scenes, the very agency responsible for funding the government is being dismantled before their eyes.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14503235/IRS-workers-paralyzed-DOGEs-massive-cuts-claim-Elon-Musks-budget-busters-reshaping-agency.html