IRS recalls fired workers as April 15 tax crush looms

After a court ordered the Internal Revenue Service to rehire some 7,000 probationary workers, the employees were put on administrative leave — kept on the federal payroll, but not back at work.

Now it’s tax season and the bosses at the IRS need those erstwhile employees at their desks.

A notice to probationary employees — fired in February and reinstated in March — directed workers at the U.S. tax collector to prepare to return to “full duty” by April 14 — one day before the country’s taxes are due, according to a copy viewed by Bloomberg News.

Between now and the agency’s most important date on the calendar, workers will be picking up new federal ID badges, powering up computers they turned in when the terminations hit in February and negotiating remote work arrangements in cities where the IRS doesn’t have office space. 

For employees who don’t want to come back, the notice provides an out: workers can send an email to decline to return and resign from the agency.

But management said workers don’t need to give up jobs they took in the weeks since the Department of Government Efficiency first initiated the firings — in what could be a sign of the IRS’ manpower needs as tax returns roll in.

“Please know that outside employment does not necessarily prevent you from returning to work,” the message read.

The IRS declined to comment.

These roughly 7,000 employees were fired in February as part of Elon Musk’s DOGE effort to slash the U.S. government’s workforce. But a federal judge in Maryland ruled last month that 18 agencies, including the Treasury Department which oversees the IRS, had to reinstate their fired probationary workers, as the courts continue to weigh the legality of the job cuts.

At the time, unions said that bringing workers back onto the federal payroll, even keeping them on leave, would reverse the economic hit of the layoffs and restore affected employees’ health benefits. 

Still, the Trump administration’s longterm goal of cutting the IRS workforce in half is expected to dramatically raise wait times for customer service functions, including helping individual filers with tax returns. It’s also likely to be good news for tax cheats, tax experts said, since it will cramp the agency’s ability to audit returns, including some of the wealthiest people in the country.