By The Trump administration has dismissed the Internal Revenue Service’s chief legal officer and is moving forward with a substantial reduction of the agency’s workforce by nearly 20 percent. This restructuring aligns with an initiative led by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), backed by billionaire Elon Musk, which seeks access to sensitive taxpayer information. However, these efforts have sparked significant resistance from career IRS employees.
The move from Trump is a drastic sea change with the agency, which saw a rapid expansion under the Biden administration after a Democratic Congress sent billions to the IRS to hire tens of thousands of new agents. They claimed that the new agents would only target the super-rich rather than the middle class, but studies have shown that to be untrue.
William Paul, a longtime IRS attorney who assumed the role of chief counsel in January, is being replaced by Andrew De Mello, a former nominee for the Education Department’s inspector general position during Trump’s first term. This abrupt leadership change has raised concerns among IRS staff, many of whom view it as part of a broader effort to reshape the agency’s leadership, reports the Washington Post.
DOGE officials instructed the acting IRS commissioner to eliminate 18,141 jobs across the agency by May 15, according to records obtained by The Washington Post.
The tax compliance department would have the largest job cuts (8,260) followed by taxpayer services (3,247) and information technology, the records show. Those moves are only an initial phase of job cuts.
Gavin Kliger, a DOGE software engineer embedded at the IRS, has signaled to agency leadership plans for further headcount reductions, according to two of the people.
The internal reshuffling comes as career staff clash with DOGE officials over attempts to access taxpayer information widely viewed as some of the most closely guarded records in the federal government. The Trump Department of Homeland Security has pushed IRS officials for the addresses of about 700,000 undocumented immigrants — a request viewed by career staff as violating the law. DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency, has also pressed for tax agency systems, property and datasets.
Separately, the Trump administration is also moving forward with cuts to tens of thousands of jobs at the tax agency.
Former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who led the agency from 2013 to 2017, told WaPo that Paul’s removal as highly unusual. He noted that acting chief counsels, typically career professionals, are rarely dismissed before a permanent replacement is named. Koskinen warned that the decision could disrupt agency operations at a critical time.
Koskinen’s opinions about Trump and the IRS should probably be taken with a grain of salt, however.
The former IRS leader played a significant role in allegedly covering up Lois Lerner’s attack against the Tea Party movement to help Barack Obama win reelection. In 2013, President Barack Obama appointed Koskinen, a seasoned bureaucrat who had previously helped restructure Freddie Mac after the 2008-09 financial crisis, to lead the IRS amid a scandal. One major challenge he faced was managing the controversy surrounding the disappearance of over two years’ worth of emails from IRS official Lois Lerner.
Among the recovered emails, one from Lerner—turned over to investigators in July 2014—referred to some Republicans as “crazies.” Koskinen later faced an impeachment resolution accusing him of deliberately misleading Congress. Lawmakers alleged that he falsely claimed to have provided all of Lerner’s emails while knowing that thousands were missing and that backup copies had been destroyed.
The IRS later apologized for targeting the Tea Party movement.
The IRS and the Treasury Department have declined to comment on Trump’s changes, and Paul has not responded to requests for a statement.
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