Beth Crowell was proud to work for the Internal Revenue Service.
She spent much of her career as an accountant for large corporations, gaining intimate knowledge of how to pay the taxes they owe, and sometimes not. She worked for the IRS in Colorado and wanted to bring her skills to new uses. She wanted to help raise more money for the federal government.
Shortly after joining the company last July, she had a chance. Crowell, 64, joined the team that began auditing the company, which earns around $3 billion a year. The IRS said the IRS had never looked into the company before because there were not enough employees with the skills of such complex cases. “They are large multinational companies and it's not normal that they're not being investigated,” she said.
By hiring Crowell and thousands of other experienced tax professionals like last year, the IRS was trying to fill these gaps and reshape their ability to enforce tax laws after years of collapse. This effort was expected to help the US recover billions with additional tax revenues.
Layoffs then began. The end has been particularly hard hit in Crowell's division, big corporations and internationally, as the Trump administration targets recent adoption across the government. Of the more than 7,000 people who have been laid off from the IRS so far, about half have worked in her department.
As a result, the IRS may struggle even further with its basic mission of collecting taxes. Labor-intensive research into large businesses and rich Americans can decline. This is a decline in enforcement, despite Elon Musk saying that it helps his team narrow it down.
Crowell said the audit, which was in the middle of command, is now drifting away. Five of the nine people, including Crowell, were fired. What she called the IRS slam dunk case might not end.
“We were going to get over these issues and do it in an effective, professional and supportive way,” she said. “All the momentum we had is gone, and I don't know if they have the support they need to be placed and rebuild and reconvene to overcome all this.”
The firing of probation employees like Crowell was just the beginning of President Trump's widespread agenda for the IRS. The administration is preparing for budget cuts and further layoffs that could ultimately reduce half of the 100,000 workforce. At the same time, Trump advocates for more political control over institutions historically isolated from changing leadership in the White House.
Shortly after the election, Trump chose former Republican House member and voice supporter of the president, Billy Long, to lead the IRS, which was a rare choice for Long. He never ran a large organization, and his only background in taxes consisted of pitching small businesses with fraudulent tax credits. And by deciding to replace IRS head Daniel Werfel a few years before his term in 2027, Trump had overturned the norm that IRS commissioners remain in their roles even when a new president takes office.
After paying more than $11 billion to the IRS in 2021, Musk, who claimed to keep records of the largest individual tax bill, sent technicians to the agency with the aim of automating many of its features. The existence of so-called government efficiency is growing in the IRS, where Musk's allies are preparing to cancel numerous contracts with external technology vendors.
Also, as Homeland Security officials are already seeking the IRS to help migrants deport, officials and tax experts from some agencies worry that the Trump administration could also use its vast store of taxpayer information to try to implement its political goals.
This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen current and former IRS officials, Capitol Hill aides, and other tax agencies in Washington. They explained the deep uncertainty as the IRS cycled through three leaders in a few weeks, and Trump's team moved to rapidly remake one of the government's most basic institutions.
An IRS spokesperson declined to comment. A Treasury spokesman said the Trump administration is exploring various options to streamline the IRS.
“The previous plans have not been approved, but modernization is needed to keep up with the process of Americans filing taxes, including the reality that over 90% of individual tax returns are filed electronically,” the spokesman said. “These changes are intended to improve taxpayer customer service and ensure a smooth and successful filing season.”
“Unknown Situation”
Even if a successor was chosen, Biden's appointee, Werfel, wanted to stay in the job as long as possible.
The intergenerational overhaul of the IRS he was hired to lead was under threat by Trump, but Werfel thought it might still be able to continue for the first few months of the Trump administration. Long's Senate confirmation took time, and Werfel wanted to help the IRS survive the application season at the highest interest period, when millions of Americans file returns.
Throughout the transition, Werfel repeatedly asked incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bescent's staff members whether he wanted him to continue working. But Mr. Becent and his staff never asked Mr. Werfel to stay – they did not explicitly tell him to go – he decided he would resign.
“The situation would have been somewhat unknown,” Werfel said in an interview before resigning on January 20th.
As an institution responsible for receiving money from Americans to fund the government, the IRS has long been unpopular with the public. In that sense, it was a natural target for the anti-government crusades, even when it meant reducing tax revenue. Musk, Long and members of Trump's staff have increased the likelihood of abolishing the IRS altogether.
Even before Trump took office, Musk's peers were scrutinizing the IRS and asking about the agency's information technology and head count during the transition meeting. The IRS was working on updating its rattling technology systems under the modernization plan, but the Trump team quickly revealed that they believe the agency is moving too slowly and employing too many people.
When he arrived at IRS headquarters in February, Gavin Kliger, a 25-year-old software engineer with Musk's Doge team, wanted wide visibility into an agency's database full of personal information about American jobs, revenue and family. IRS officials have finally agreed to show their anonymized tax data, but a court order banning Doge employees in the financial system has previously prevented Kliger from doing so.
At meetings, Krigger, who is dressed in full black, often gets impatient and accusssed him of stonewalling and failing to comply with the White House executive orders when he raised legal concerns about his demands, according to people who interacted with him. Kliger did not respond to requests for comment.
When IRS HR staff didn't prepare their agency to host another Doge aide over the weekend, Sam Corcos, a self-descriptive minimalist who repeatedly said he only owns a pair of pants, accused Kliger of not moving the IRS' key human capital officers of being quick enough.
The new IRS chief, promoted under the Trump administration, was temporarily promoted and agreed to lead the agency. Melanie Kraus took over after the retirement of his last interim leader, Douglas O'Donnell. Last week, she placed Traci Dimartini, the lead director, who took a management leave to not respond to Doge's requests and her performance during a massive layoff in the first round, according to two people familiar with the issue.
“My taxpayer dollars have been wasted.”
Caryn Burns has been frustrated for a long time with the IRS, which took too long to call back. Also, the IRS staff she handled during her career as an accountant can be overwhelming. However, when she began working there in September, she began to get a sense of why agencies seem to be in a frequent shortage.
The technology is old-fashioned and took several weeks to learn to use it. And while the workforce was growing rapidly under the Biden administration, the number of employees has increased by 20,000 over three years, Burns said the IRS still appears to be short on staff.
“They couldn't hire fast enough to make the necessary changes,” she said. “I learned all this and when I first got access to all these programs, I realized this wasn't what I was thinking. There really aren't many people out there.”
Burns, 58, worked in the large business and international divisions in Phoenix, Arizona, before she was fired last month. She is approaching completing an audit that generates considerable tax payments against the IRS, and it's unclear if her former colleague has the resources to complete it after the layoff.
“I voted for Trump. I like Trump,” she said. “I like his final semester in office and everything he was standing there.”
“But now he brought Elon Musk,” she said.
IRS leaders were scrambling to identify all probation employees overseen by the Trump administration. It was a pain to quickly put together a list. For example, employees who are thought to be needed during filing season are to be spared. The day before the shooting began, several senior officials at IRS headquarters were not sure exactly how many people the agency would eventually let go.
Amanda Musgrave, 41, showed up at work in hopes of being fired soon. She started working at the huge IRS campus in Austin, Texas last June, so she knew she was vulnerable. Mrs. Musgrave enjoyed the job and was unhappy with the need to finish it.
Even though there were security officers and HR departments on campus to facilitate layoffs, Mrs Musgrave said she and some of her colleagues had waited hours for an official termination notification to arrive in their email inbox. The stress began to build up and eventually she was tired of waiting. In the afternoon, she demanded that the manager be fired her so that she could go home.
“I had a panic attack, but it wasn't fair,” she said. “It completely degraded what I went through and I disliked it.”
More broadly, Mrs. Musgrave has a prolonged sense that the layoffs overseen by Musk's team would produce more government waste. Americans may find it easy to avoid paying all the taxes they owe, but what was the ultimate for all the time and money that the IRS spent hiring her and thousands of other people?
“My taxes were wasted on training all of my employees, so I didn't even get the chance to get out of the probationary period,” she said.
