Executive order’s hiring freeze causes IRS to cancel some job offers
The IRS has rescinded all job offers with a start date after Feb. 8 or with an unconfirmed start date because of a hiring freeze ordered by President Donald Trump, the agency said on its website.
All offers with a start date on or before Feb. 8 will continue or proceed with the hiring or onboarding process, according to a post on the IRS jobs website. Meanwhile, the IRS said it will remove all jobs posted to external websites, including USAJOBS.gov.
Trump signed an executive order on Monday to freeze the hiring of federal civilian employees throughout the executive branch, with some exceptions. The order expires after several federal agencies submit a plan to reduce the size of the federal workforce, except for the IRS. The hiring freeze remains in effect at the IRS until the Treasury secretary, in consultation with others, determines that it is in the national interest to lift the freeze.
“Every facet of IRS operations” will be affected by the hiring freeze, according to a LinkedIn post by Charles Rettig, who served as IRS commissioner from 2018 to 2022.
A post on LinkedIn from Melanie Lauridsen, the AICPA’s vice president–Tax Policy & Advocacy, said that “while the AICPA acknowledges some concerns regarding the impact that the hiring freeze will have on tax administration, the IRS has said they will ‘reallocate workers from other areas to help cover filing season processing’ to meet the needs of this filing season.”
The IRS did not respond to emails asking how many jobs were frozen. A spokeswoman for the Taxpayer Advocate Service said the office had nothing to share as it continued trying to understand the implications of all of Trump’s executive orders and how to comply.
The freeze may or may not affect tax season service directly, but it could intersect with retirements in a way that does, said Nina Olson, executive director of the not-for-profit Center for Taxpayer Rights and a previous national taxpayer advocate for over 18 years.
“With the announcement of returning to work in the office, many of the IRS employees who are retirement age and currently teleworking may just decide to retire and lock in their retirement benefits,” she wrote in an email. “If that happens, then some of the important filing season/taxpayer service/accounts positions the IRS has filled — phone, correspondence, error resolution, tax examiner — won’t be able to be back-filled, and that will signal real impact on the filing season.”
For Susan Crosthwait, the rescission of a tentative job offer as a tax examining clerk at the IRS processing center in Ogden, Utah, was one of three rescinded offers in her family. Her two daughters were offered jobs as entry-level clerks once background checks were completed, and all three had been advised they would start work on Feb. 24, Crosthwait said in an interview with the JofA.
The job description said the IRS was hiring for full-time, seasonal positions on swing shifts that would last six to eight months or longer and that, once hired, employees could return to their position each year.
“We did the interviewing, fingerprinting, and then there was the onboarding we did,” Crosthwait said. “We filled out several forms and signed agreements, and then they said that all we were waiting on was the background check and then you’d get the firm job offer.”
Instead, she got an email on Tuesday that read: “This notification is to inform you that we are rescinding your job offer due to: The freeze on the hiring of federal civilian employees as directed by the President on January 20, 2025, via Presidential Memorandum entitled ‘Hiring Freeze.'”
It advised her not to report to work on Feb. 24.
Her daughters received the same email, Crosthwait said.
The president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), whose members include IRS workers, criticized the hiring freeze, saying it jeopardizes improvements made at the agency just as tax filing season opens.
“Under a hiring freeze, there is no way to compensate for normal attrition and make sure that retirees are replaced with the next generation of public servants trained to help Americans file their taxes and catch those trying to cheat the system,” NTEU President Doreen Greenwald said in a statement.
The new hires did not represent an expansion of IRS employees, Greenwald said. Instead, they would have replenished the agency’s workforce to levels that existed before budget cuts, she said. “Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, American taxpayers have received better customer service, improved technology, additional resources and staffing,” she said. “Freezing hiring at the IRS will severely impact the level of service provided to American taxpayers when they need it most.”
Olson said the IRS normally tries to have seasonal hires for filing season onboard by late fall so it can do training in December or early January.
“Given the big hire for phones last year, they may just be doing hiring to cover attrition,” she wrote.