Layoffs Hit IRS Amid Shutdown Standoff, And They’re Bigger Than Anyone Thought

Fourteen-hundred employees at the Internal Revenue Service will be laid off in a process initiated Friday, The Daily Wire has learned.

The number is larger than anyone expected, with the IRS union filing a lawsuit to stop what it said it had “heard” might be 1,300 layoffs across the entire Treasury Department. The real number, an Office of Management and Budget official told The Daily Wire, is 1,400 at the IRS alone, plus more at other components of Treasury.

The layoffs come as Democrats refuse to fund the government at all unless the Republican majority agrees to increased spending for non-citizens’ health care and other topics. That has resulted in a government shutdown, wherein employees are sent home and traditionally receive back pay once a deal is reached.

The Trump administration has countered that if federal employees are going to be prohibited from working due to a shutdown, some will never come back at all – particularly those that staff agencies favored by Democrats.

The IRS was targeted as a bloated agency that Democrats have used for political purposes, including targeting conservative nonprofits, the OMB official said. The official said the tax collecting agency spent $35 million on guns, ammunition, and military-style weaponry between 2006 and 2023, and advertised job postings that said special agents must be willing to use “deadly force.”

The official said unnecessary and redundant employees would be targeted, with those focused on the prompt processing of tax returns protected. Still, cuts to the revenue-collection agency mean that Democrats’ efforts to increase government spending in the short term could backfire, with the ability to collect increased revenue diminished.

Get 40% off new DailyWire+ annual memberships with code FALL40 at checkout

Politico reported that layoffs are likely to also affect the departments of Interior, Homeland Security, Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency.

The government has been shut down for ten days, and the Senate failed to reach a deal Thursday night.

The Daily Wire reported Friday that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said Republicans held off on layoffs for 10 days to give Senate Democrats a chance to agree to agree to extend government funding at existing levels, but that now, “this gets real.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer countered, “Nobody’s forcing Trump and [OMB Director Russ Vought] to do this.”

Related: ‘The Government Can Destroy Anyone’: How An IRS-Led Global Alliance Ruined An Innocent American Banker