The hiring freeze resulted in the withdrawal of job offers to some 2,200 submission processing employee candidates. Image: Your Hand Please/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffSeveral indicators of the level of service to taxpayers slipped in the early part of this year’s tax filing season, a period before the IRS felt the full impact of ongoing and planned staff reductions, an IG report has said.
An interim assessment of the filing season said that through March 1, 4.5 million calls were answered by IRS assistors, with an 87 percent level of service and a 3.4-minute average speed of answer. The level of service dropped from 91 percent and the average speed of answer increased from 2.4 minutes for the 2024 filing season. In addition, a “level of access” measure developed by the IG of calls seeking assistance that ultimately receive assistance was just 30.2 percent.
It added: “Recent developments such as the governmentwide hiring freeze, a second deferred resignation program, announced reductions in force, etc. will have significant impacts on IRS operations. Certain critical filing season positions were exempt from the deferred resignation program through at least May 15, 2025. Consequently, there has not been an impact to the 2025 filing season.”
The hiring freeze resulted in the withdrawal of job offers to some 2,200 submission processing employee candidates in a function that had not met its hiring goals despite using flexibilities such as direct hire authority, it said.
In addition, “IRS management indicated they expect to lose approximately 450 submission processing function [which generally processes tax returns] employees through the first deferred resignation program and approximately 1,400 through the second. They anticipate the losses will impact their processing times,” it said.
Overall, it added, some 23,000 IRS employees applied for deferred resignation, of whom 13,000 have been approved. The IRS had 99,000 employees as of last September, the most recent count posted by OPM; a recent budget proposal from the agency anticipates a 2026 level just above 60,000.
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