By occupation, losses have ranged from 28 percent among management and program analysts to 22 percent among miscellaneous clerical and assistants. Image: DCStockPhotography/Shutterstock.com
The IRS is on track to cut its workforce by a quarter from the roughly 100,000 at the start of the year, an inspector general report has said, adding that the most of that will be due to employees accepting incentives to leave rather than being laid off.
The report is the second accounting of employment trends at the IRS, providing more detail than what is generally available from other agencies undergoing their own cutbacks.
It shows for example that nearly 4,600 employees accepted and were approved for the initial government-wide deferred resignation offer and another 17,900 accepted and were approved a later Treasury Department-specific offer. Of the total, about 3,500 were probationary employees who received termination notices in January or February and opted to take deferred resignation.
Nearly 2,000 accepted early retirement offers and about another 3,100 employees left for standard retirement, resignation and other purposes, including about 750 probationary employees who received termination notices and decided to resign. About another 3,000 probationary employees who received such notices later were brought back to the job but “it is unclear whether any probationary employees will remain reinstated or be terminated in a large-scale RIF,” said the report.
In addition, about another 300 received RIF notices that were delayed by a court order that since has been lifted; nearly half of them meanwhile have accepted one type of separation incentive or another.
By business unit, the largest percentage loss was 35 percent in the small business/self-employed unit, and the smallest was 19 percent in the large business and international unit. By occupation, losses have ranged from 28 percent among management and program analysts to 22 percent among miscellaneous clerical and assistants.
The report did not include an assessment of the impact on the agency’s performance but noted that the National Taxpayer Advocate recently said that “the IRS needs a sufficient number of trained employees to program its processing systems, develop and disseminate timely and clear guidance on tax law changes, answer telephone calls and process correspondence, among other things.”
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