The Trump administration intends to cut down on the offices of National Taxpayer Advocates (NTAs). The third time announced staffing cuts at the Internal Revenue Service, which is amid a broader initiative to significantly reduce the federal workforce.
In response to a hill's question about NTA's reductions to the workforce, he reported to Congress about IRS service levels and advocated individual taxpayer cases to the IRS, a Treasury spokesperson told Hill that the agency was trying to “right-size” its workforce.
“These adjustments to the right size of the NTA will never adversely affect its mission or its services to taxpayers in a meaningful way,” a spokesman for the Treasury said in a statement.
Confirmation of NTA layoffs continues in a Report From the Washington Post, the NTA will fire 25% of its staff.
It also follows reports that the Trump administration is planning to remove nearly 20% of the IRS workforce in general, but the Treasury director said Friday that it has not kept certain numbers in mind for the overall cuts in national tax collection agencies.
The IRS has already fired nearly 7,000 court employees, of which more than 5,000 are focused on tax compliance.
The announced cuts come in the middle of the 2024 tax filing season, where many taxpayers are seeking to help file taxes within the highly complex US tax system.
Service levels were strict during the 2024 filing season, with less than a third of calls made by Live IRS agents. According to the NTA's annual report to Congress, agents answered 31% of calls in 2024 in 2024, 29% of calls in 2023, and 13% of calls in 2022.
In many advanced economies, tax returns are filed by the government on behalf of taxpayers, greatly simplifying the process of paying taxes.
A Treasury spokesperson said the organization's caseload remains the same while the NTA budget is increasing.
“In 2021-2024, despite the lack of an increase in the number of cases received, the NTA budget has grown almost 30% to $271 million,” the spokesman added.
Total budget request Of the IRS, 2024, 0.2% of total government spending was around $6.8 trillion.
According to a statement from former IRS commissioner Charles Lettig in 2022, the government is unable to collect about $700 billion in taxes each year.
At that level, the tax disparity is almost 4% of the total US economic output.
