(Bloomberg Law) – Cutting IRS staff in the next half of the next 10 months will mean less help and waits longer for many US taxpayers and increase the risk that rich tax fraud will be saved by paying what they owe.

He would also leave the internal income service with his smaller labor force since at least the 1960s, according to Official IRS data.

The Trump administration plans to reduce the number of IRS employees half by the end of the year, reported Tuesday Bloomberg Tax. But giving the workforce so dramatically and so quickly can mean slower reimbursement and processing of returns for many Americans, bringing the agency back to the difficulties it experienced before an infusion of tens of billions in new funds under tax and climate 2022 known as the act of reducing inflation, according to tax professionals.

“This strikes me like foolishness, unless your goal is to go bankrupt the US government by essentially making the tax payment option,” said Kimberly Clausci, a tax law professor at the University of California in Los Angeles and a former Treasury Department official under President Joe Biden. “I think the approach they are following so far seems to be getting a devastating ball in the system without worrying about the consequences.”

The planned job cuts in an IRS workforce that in January were approximately 100,000 would encounter agencies. They will include withdrawals, dismissals and two already announced efforts: the shooting of probation workers and the plan of “driven resignation” of Trump's adviser Elon Musk, under which some employees have resigned in exchange for this September.

About 12,000 employees have already left the agency under those two attempts.

“IRS needs more people, no less,” said Lee Meyercord, a partner in the Netherlands & Knight. Job cuts like these “will change dramatic improvement in recent years in the service, collection and implementation of taxpayers.”

Tax frauds “will sleep better at night,” Clausci said, predicting that rich people's audits would be more attracted, less efficient and less investigation when they happen at all.

Changes of structure, uncertainty

Not everyone has the same picture of the workforce changes.

Half staff numbers “will force IRS to rethink how it is structured and how it works,” said David Katter, Federal Specialty Tax Director at US LLP and a former Treasury Department official during President Donald Trump's first term. The administration still wants to collect taxes, but big cuts are an expression of the idea that IRS “must change” and “do something different,” he said.

But big staff cuts would mean longer expectations for taxpayers to resolve disputes with IRS, said Nikole Fax, a director at PriceWaterhousecoopers and a former IRS commissioner of large business and international division.

There will be “fewer tax security opportunities” if dispute settlement programs such as complaints, rapid settlement and preliminary price agreements become less accessible to taxpayers, she said.

Longer expectations for settlement of disputes will also cost companies' money, in the form of ongoing legal tariffs and the interest they continue to accumulate on their tax bills.

'Disbelief towards government'

What areas will feel the biggest impact will depend exactly on where the job cuts are finally done, said Monte Jackel, director at Jackel Law Law and a former IRS official. Whether they are from employees in general or focused on IRS divisions such as LB & I and the office of the main council; Whether they are mostly in Washington or outside of Washington.

“I don't know how they will prioritize,” Jackel said.

The consequences of job cuts can be long-term, said Janet Holtzblatt, an old associate at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

Next year's appearance season was already looking for “shaky” anyway, she said, because the IRS funds through the act of reducing inflation is intended to dry by the end of this year, and the breaks from work will only deepen problems with IRS performance.

“In combination, it enhances the government's distrust and creates further weakness in the IRS's ability to administer the tax code,” Holtzblatt said.

The threat of large job cuts has already destroyed morality among IRS employees, said David Carrone, an IRS income agent and a chapter of the National Union of Treasury employees in Arkansas and Luiziana.

“Your whole routine is gone. You're waiting for that ruby ​​on your shoulder, “Carrone said. Employees continue to do their job, he said, but” the reality of the situation is everyone's head is rotating. “

Kautter said job cuts will encourage agency to adopt technology rapidly to do its job.

But improved IRS technology is not a substitute for the people needed to perform complex audits of the intricate returns of rich people who are needed to force them to pay, Carrone said.

“The computer can't catch them.”

Rebecca Chen in Washington also contributed to this story.

To contact reporters for this story: Michael Rapoport in New Jersey in (Protected Email); Erin Schilling in Washington in (Protected Email); Lauren brother in (Protected Email)

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory Henderson in (Protected Email); Martha Mueller Neff in (Protected Email)