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After convincing some 9,000 employees in the IRS’s taxpayer service division to resign this year, the federal government has realized that, um, maybe that wasn’t the best idea.
The IRS recently posted job openings for around 4,500 IRS contact (aka customer service) representatives, according to the Federal News Network (FNN). Those are the employees in the agency’s Taxpayer Service division who answer phone calls, reply to mail, and work with taxpayers who visit its in-person service centers.
The agency had one of the smoothest “filing seasons in recent memory” this year, National Taxpayer Advocate Erin M. Collins wrote in her midyear report to Congress. It processed upward of 98% of individual tax returns and improved the Level of Service on its phone lines from 63% in 2024 to 87%. Last year’s filing season was also successful, thanks in part to Biden-era IRA funding that allowed the IRS to hire around 2,000 customer service representatives (CSRs) in 2023. In 2024, it answered 9 million more phone calls than in 2022, and cut wait times in half.
But the IRS stands to lose around 26% of its workforce once this year’s reductions in force are in full effect. More than 9,000 of the departing employees are from the Taxpayer Services division, which will shrink by around 22%.
In its FY 2026 budget request, the IRS said it would need to employ around 11,000 CSRs to maintain its current level of service. Collins recommended that the agency hire more “essential filing season employees,” including CSRs and tax processors, by the end of this summer, so that they could be trained in time for next tax season.
The IRS seems to be looking to reduce at least some of that training time: Around three-quarters of the new job postings are open only to current or former IRS or federal employees, while around a quarter are open to the general public, FNN reported.
“The IRS is using its direct hire authority,” FNN said, which will allow it to hire in 40–45 days, versus the 101 days it typically averages to hire a federal employee.
Whether former IRS staff will want the newly opened positions remains to be seen. Morale at the agency is said to be low, and many of the new gigs are listed as “seasonal.”
Technically, the IRS is under an indefinite hiring freeze due to a Trump executive order, but the freeze can be thawed if the Secretary of the Treasury, working with the Director of OMB and the Administrator of USDS, decide it’s in the “national interest” to do so. (Maybe Scott Bessent got tired of the IRS’s hold music?)