IRS seeks to fill ‘critical vacancies’ as workforce declines 25%

The IRS, which has lost about 25% of its workforce this year, is moving to fill some jobs by various means, including asking employees who accepted deferred resignations if they want to stay on the job.

The “IRS has identified areas where staffing reductions created a potential gap in mission critical expertise and is exercising its discretion to offer you the opportunity to rescind your Deferred Resignation Program/Treasury Deferred Resignation Program (DRP/TDRP) agreement” reads the email, sent Wednesday to managers.

Two days later, the IRS emailed employees who accepted deferred resignations.

“The IRS has identified critical vacancies that need to be filled and is exercising its discretion to offer you the opportunity to rescind your Deferred Resignation Program/Treasury Deferred Resignation Program (DRP/TDRP) agreement,” the email sent to staffers said.

The resignation agreements “may only be rescinded upon mutual agreement between the employee and IRS,” the Friday email said.

It’s not clear how many employees received the email, which said that interested staffers have five days to respond. They will then be notified if they have been identified to fill critical vacancy and will receive a rescission agreement.

A report released in July by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) found that IRS actions have resulted in a workforce reduction of about 25%, with 25,386 employees departing as of May through some sort of incentive program such as deferred resignation. Another 294 employees received reduction-in-force notices but have not been terminated because of a court injunction, as is the case for 3,023 probationary employees. These employees continue to work at the IRS unless they choose to separate or are terminated for other reasons, the report said.

A separate TIGTA report, dated Aug. 14, found that the 7,315 probationary employees who were terminated in February and March did not have performance issues, as their termination letters stated. Of those workers, 3,716 did not have a performance rating on record. Of the remaining 3,599 workers, 3,556 were rated fully successful or higher, TIGTA’s report said.

Over half of the probationary employees either took the TDRP or resigned, the August report said.

— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Martha Waggoner at Martha.Waggoner@aicpa-cima.com.