IRS plans to bring back workers it pushed out but now needs

The IRS plans to ask workers who accepted offers of deferred resignation and early retirement to come back to work — an attempt to make up for staffing losses after the agency found it had vacancies in critical jobs.

The tax agency — which lost nearly 25,700 employees, or 25 percent of the workforce, from buyouts, resignations and firings — told employees that it now wants to reverse some of those losses by reassigning workers, asking workers who took buyouts to return and launching a hiring campaign. Those who took the buyout are among more than 154,000 employees throughout government who remain on the payroll, part of a sweeping effort to cull the federal workforce through voluntary departures. The Trump administration initially planned for widespread layoffs, spearheaded by Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service, but litigation stalled those efforts.

The staffing losses at the IRS could create risks for next year’s filing season, even though the IRS had a strong year in revenue this year, the agency’s independent watchdog warned in June.

It is a particularly eventful time at the IRS. Former Missouri congressman Billy Long left the agency recently after just two months, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was named as acting commissioner, becoming the seventh person to lead the IRS since the start of the year. Last week, Bessent ousted three senior IRS executives responsible for online tax services and the scrutiny of tax-exempt organizations.

The IRS and Treasury press offices did not respond to questions about how many workers the agency hoped to bring back.

The IRS human capital office told managers Wednesday in an email that officials will contact those who took the buyout offers.

“IRS has identified areas where staffing reductions created a potential gap in mission critical expertise,” said the email, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Post. “As a result, IRS will utilize all available tools — including details, reassignments, DRP/TDRP rescissions, and extensive hiring — to identify resources to fulfill the mission critical skill sets.”

An email sent to one departed IRS worker on Friday asked if the worker would be interested in “the opportunity to rescind your Deferred Resignation Program/Treasury Deferred Resignation Program” agreement, noting that it could only be rescinded “upon mutual agreement between the employee and IRS.”

More than 4,500 IRS employees were approved for the first buyout, according to the agency’s watchdog. In April, the Treasury Department offered a second buyout, and more than 17,800 workers left Treasury, which includes the IRS.

Among those workers, according to the agency watchdog, were more than 3,500 probationary employees. Probationary workers were among the first to be fired early in the administration. The dismissals, however, were reversed by agency leadership after a legal challenge.

The probationary workers were told they were fired for poor performance, even though nearly all the terminated employees either did not have a performance rating on record or were well rated, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found. Officials also realized that a number of those employees who had been selected for termination were mission-critical, the inspector general’s office said.

The IRS is not the only agency to change its mind about fired workers. The Agriculture Department sought to rehire bird flu response workers after avian influenza sent egg prices soaring in February. Workers who maintain America’s nuclear weapons at the National Nuclear Security Administration were also brought back after an outcry.