As IRS staff cuts hit during tax season, experts say file on time and correctly

Amid reports of turbulence and deep staffing cuts at the Internal Revenue Service, tax experts are still offering a clear and simple message as this season’s deadlines approach: File your taxes, as early as possible.

“You always want to file a complete and accurate tax return,” said Nels Larsen, owner of Guidance Accounting in St. Paul, which prepares returns for small businesses and their owners.

It remains to be seen how the average taxpayer might experience issues this year depending on how the agency’s employment resources are allocated, Larsen said, though he sees potential for lags on processing returns that require employee review. Getting IRS staff on the phone to assist may also become more challenging for everyday filers.

“If they think it’s bad now when they call the IRS, they might have to wait for an hour, two hours, and then hopefully the person who answers the phone will be able to help them. I think the odds of that happening are going to be going down, not up,” Larsen said.

Individual filers whose refunds are flagged may also be delayed, Larsen said, stressing the importance of making sure everything submitted to the government at tax time is 100% correct.

Larsen, a certified public accountant with more than 25 years of experience, worries fewer IRS employees will mean a widening of the tax gap, which represents the amount of money the agency estimates is owed in tax vs. what comes into the government coffers.

Essential workers who process tax returns and refunds have so far not been affected by cutbacks as far as Lisa Greene-Lewis has heard. The TurboTax spokesperson and certified public accountant declined to “speculate on future plans.”

The IRS encourages filing taxes early and electronically, setting up a direct deposit account, taking enough time to ensure accurate paperwork for a smooth process. The deadline for S corporations to file tax forms is March 17; individual filers and corporations must file April 15.

Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported President Donald Trump’s administration is drafting plans to potentially cut the IRS workforce — approximately 90,000 staffers — in half, aligning with a broader effort to vastly reduce the number of federal government employees.

The latest concern over firings comes as the White House and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by billionaire and Trump wingman Elon Musk, has already moved to slash thousands of federal government jobs over the past few weeks.

Probationary employees, who usually have less than a year on the job and lack the same protections as career civil servants, have reportedly been targeted en masse and abruptly dismissed for stated performance issues. About 6,700 were cut from the IRS last month. Minnesotans are among the ranks of federal employees swiftly fired.

In a guest opinion published by the New York Times last week, seven former IRS commissioners appointed under Republican and Democratic presidents criticized the decision to cut the IRS during tax season. They said the cuts are akin to a private company firing its accounts receivable staff, and the disruption would hamper IRS’ ability to effectively and accurately collect revenue.

Several Trump administration actions have been halted in federal courts. On Friday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced his office would join with 19 other attorneys general seeking to prevent “illegal mass layoffs of federal probationary employees.”

The attorneys general claim the firings were unlawful because the terminations are clearly part of the administration’s effort to downsize workforce, which triggered regulations to provide advance notices that were never delivered.

“I do not wake up every day looking for reasons to sue Donald Trump,” Ellison, a party to several lawsuits brought against the federal government since January, said in a statement. “Yet once again, his administration’s willful violations of the law have forced me to take action.”

More than 62,000 federal government jobs were cut in February alone as actions under DOGE drove government sector layoffs to lead all industries, employer advisory firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported Thursday. Including layoffs in the private sector, heavily driven by reductions in retail, the report identified significant job cuts across the Midwest compared with the same period in 2024, including a 135% increase in Minnesota.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.