DOGE’s IRS cuts will cost the average American a fortune 

Today is Tax Day, and the brazen attack of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency against the federal government looms large over the IRS. The recent announcement that reductions in force are commencing at the IRS spells danger for taxpayer services, essential government workers and the heart of our voluntary tax system.  

As the president of the union representing IRS employees and the executive director of the largest tax fairness coalition, we each bring a different perspective to this unfolding catastrophe. But we share the same strong objection to DOGE’s drastic, ill-conceived and likely illegal attack on the nation’s tax collection agency. 

The immediate victims of the DOGE attacks on the agency are the laid-off employees and those threatened with firing. Though Musk and President Trump present their haphazard crusade as one waged against elites in the nation's capital, the reality is that about 85 percent of federal employees work outside the Washington, D.C., area. As a result, neighbors across the country will lose their jobs, and communities everywhere will feel the economic impact of lost IRS positions and facilities.

IRS employees are disproportionately female and members of racial or ethnic minorities, groups that have historically faced discrimination in hiring and advancement. Nearly 10 percent of IRS workers are military veterans. The National Treasury Employees Union is currently in court fighting these improper layoffs.

Next, taxpayers filing their annual returns and expecting prompt refunds will feel the impact. The reduction in IRS employees means fewer answered calls, longer wait times for help, and delayed refunds. The administration’s plan to shut over 100 taxpayer assistance centers across the country will leave most Americans unable to get in-person help with their tax issues. 

As damaging as the cuts are to every federal agency, cuts to the IRS are different in one important respect: They could cost us a fortune in lost revenue.  

Roughly 70 percent of the personnel cuts thus far have been in enforcement, which will make it easier to avoid detection for the millionaire and billionaire tax cheats who evade an estimated $150 billion in taxes every year. It is estimated that every dollar cut from enforcement costs five to nine dollars in revenue. So if Musk tries to cut $10 billion from IRS enforcement spending, he will be risking $50-90 billion in lost revenue each year. That’s a strange strategy for someone who claims he wants to make the government more cost-efficient.  

However, it’s really not surprising that Musk, the richest individual in the world, is focusing on diminishing the agency’s ability to enforce the law. That’s what his allies in Congress have been trying to do ever since the agency received restored funding in 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act. That increased enforcement has focused exclusively on wealthy households and big corporations. Musk has a vested interest in hobbling IRS efforts to ensure the rich and big corporations pay what they owe.  

The Inflation Reduction Act’s restored funding for the IRS yielded successes. As of last summer, the agency had collected over $1 billion just from 1,600 millionaires who owed but had failed to pay at least $250,000 each. It also informed Microsoft that it owed $29 billion in back taxes and had plans to increase audits on big companies (those worth more than $250 million), large partnerships (those with over $10 million in assets) and individuals with income over $10 million.  

The Musk axe might also fall on the IRS Direct File program, the new system allowing taxpayers in about half the country to file for free directly with the government, bypassing expensive tax preparation firms. (The program is still in the pilot stage and will eventually be available to all taxpayers.) Musk announced recently he “deleted” the technical support department that helped create Direct File, but as of now the service itself is still operational. We don’t know how long that will last with Musk’s operatives roaming the halls of the IRS.   

The restored funding for the IRS also helped it improve customer service. The average wait time on calls to the agency had dropped from 30 minutes to three; over 50 in-person taxpayer assistance centers had been opened before the mass closures, and backlogs of unprocessed returns dropped.  

All of this is at risk, of course, as DOGE prepares a “hackathon” that would allow our national tax data to be easily accessible to third parties. Compromising the tax data of millions of Americans in conjunction with efforts to stall attempts to modernize our tax system portend nothing less than disaster for the services we depend on. 

Because the IRS brings in the revenue that funds the rest of the government, Musk’s gang is striking at the heart of the federal government’s ability to fund health care for seniors, nutrition for children, and other needs of the American people. The DOGE attack on the IRS is also an attack on economic justice and equality. Taxes on ultra-high income and extreme wealth help to narrow the nation’s destabilizing economic gaps. It’s hard not to conclude that those very injuries — not “waste, fraud and abuse” — are the real aim of DOGE’s wayward campaign.  

Doreen P. Greenwald is the national president of the National Treasury Employees Union. David Kass is the executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness.