The IRS, faced with significant staffing shortages, is reassigning back-office employees to cover frontline work during this year’s filing season.
According to IRS employees familiar with these decisions, staff from human resources and potentially the agency’s IT department will carry out the work of customer service representatives and tax examiners, who review the accuracy of incoming tax returns.
Employees reassigned to frontline filing season work have been instructed to tell their coworkers that they will be on detail through the summer, “due to an alternate assignment in direct support of the IRS mission.”
IRS employees said the agency is looking to detail up to 1,400 IRS non-bargaining unit employees to volunteer for frontline filing season work. If the IRS doesn’t get that many volunteers, some employees may be “volun-told” to accept reassignment.
GovExec first reported on the IRS reassignments on Wednesday.
The IRS lost 27% of its workforce largely through voluntary separation incentives last year, according to the National Taxpayer Advocate, and the agency fell short of several hiring goals for this year’s filing season.
An IRS HR employee said the agency is asking colleagues to take voluntary downgrades to “revenue-generating positions,” including revenue agents, revenue officers, compliance officers, tax examiners and customer service representatives.
“The only thing that has motivated the few that have taken it so far is the fear of another reduction in force,” the HR employee said.
IRS employees were told last summer that layoffs were off the table. But during last year’s 43-day government shutdown, the Treasury Department sent RIF notices to nearly 1,400 IRS employees.
Most employees who received RIF notices worked in HR or IT. Treasury rescinded those RIF notices, and agencies are barred from issuing new layoff notices through Feb. 13, as part of the recent spending deal passed by Congress.
Another IRS employee said the IRS is planning to send HR and IT employees to cover frontline filing season work with “little to no training.”
IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank Bisignano, who also serves as the head of the Social Security Administration, announced a shakeup of the agency’s top ranks a week before the start of this year’s filing season.
“We know that the CEO has been preaching that filing season needs to go off without a hitch. It is obvious that some cracks are emerging,” the employee said.
The IRS is moving HR employees away from their standard work, but staff who retired from the agency last year are waiting months to receive a payout of their unused annual leave, or their first annuity payment.
Top Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee raised these concerns to Acting IRS Commissioner Scott Bessent in a Feb. 3 letter. Tax Notes reported last month that the IRS faced a backlog of 7,300 retirement applications at the end of 2025.
“This is just another example of the aftereffects of the Fork in the Road and the DRP programs,” an IRS employee said.
IT staff in ‘limbo’ after back-and-forth reassignments
Over the past few months, the IRS shipped its Online Services division over to the Treasury Department — only for Treasury to transfer the team back to the IRS.
Once the Online Services team came back to IRS, the agency dismantled its operations. Employees say they haven’t been told what work they’ll be doing next.
An IRS IT employee who worked in Online Services said that back-and-forth reorganization amounted to a “waste of time, resources and taxpayer dollars.”
“More than 110 federal employees remain uncertain about their roles, responsibilities and long-term future. For now, they technically still have employment — but not meaningful, stable work,” the employee said.
More broadly, the IRS moved more than 1,000 employees out of its IT shop in December. Relocated staff were reassigned to work for the agency’s chief operating officer, but were told this arrangement was only temporary. Displaced IRS IT employees were told to upload their resumes at the end of last month, to see if they were a fit for other vacant positions.
IRS Online Services employees were originally transferred to Treasury last September. Employees were instructed to keep working on IRS projects — using IRS equipment — until Treasury assigned them new work. During this period, employees lost access to IRS tools essential to their jobs, because they were now classified as Treasury staff.
Connecting to the IRS’s virtual private network required calling the agency’s help desk every 21 days to request a special “exemption” password. According to the Online Services employee, help desk wait times ranged between 30 minutes and over three hours.
By December, the entire group received a sudden directive ordering them to immediately stop all IRS work and all communication with IRS colleagues, effective immediately.
“Effective immediately, please stand down on any IRS-specific tasks associated with legacy Online Services (OLS),” Deputy Treasury CIO Nick Totten wrote in a Dec. 9 email. “IRS IT and Taxpayer Services will assume responsibility for all prior OLS projects, products and initiatives moving forward.”
Online Service employees were required to report to the office each day, but instead of carrying out their day-to-day work, they were told to focus on “learning something” or general self-improvement, according to an impacted worker.
An Online Services employee said this “limbo” period lasted more than five weeks. In an email sent Jan. 14, 2026, Totten told staff they were “approved to resume supporting activities directed by IRS technology leadership.”
Online Services staff eventually moved back to the IRS, but the agency’s chief information officer, Kaschit Pandya, told them in a Jan. 29 email that Online Services has “been dismantled.”
“There is no more OLS. All technology efforts are now IT’s to own/make. Please ensure your teams stop operating and executing as if OLS and IT are distinct organizations,” Pandya said.
The Online Services employee said coworkers “still do not have any work assignments.”
“None of us were also told where we will belong organizationally,” the employee said.
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