IRS prepares for more cuts as tax deadline looms

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - Thousands more Americans could soon lose their jobs. The IRS is drafting plans to cut its workforce in half.

There are roughly 90,000 workers across the country. The cuts would happen through a mix of layoffs, attrition, and incentivized buyouts. This is according to sources with the Associated Press.

Kansas City felt the last round of layoffs at the IRS last month.

Thousands of probationary employees across the country were laid off, and locally, up to a thousand people were expected to lose their jobs.

Jasper Hudgins-Bradley was one of those. He told KCTV5 that he started working in the small business collections department on Jan. 27 and was forced out on Feb. 17.

He believes that the more people who are forced out, the longer it’s going to take for taxpayers to get the help they need.

“If you get a letter from the IRS and you’re worried about what that means, you’re going to be experiencing longer wait times to get a person to answer the question if you can’t find it online,” Hudgins-Bradley said. “Without that workforce, a lot will just get grounded to a screeching halt.” He talked about how it’s already a hassle for taxpayers to go through the process of getting help.

“You need a lot of people at a lot of different levels to keep it going,” Hudgins-Bradley said. “It will be, I imagine, more difficult to get the information that they need.”

He worries about heavier workloads for the people who get to stay.

“Many hands make light work,” Hudgins-Bradley said. “Can you make the machine more efficient by removing potentially superfluous gears? Sure, but part of what makes things easier are redundancies are backups are having things in triplicates so that you have more people to do the job.”

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