Dave Nershi completed a report that worked for months when his mailbox appeared a sinister letter.
Nershi worked as a general engineer in the internal revenue service for about nine months. He was one of the hundreds of experts in the IRS who used their technical experience – the prerequisites for the nerves – a chemical and nuclear engineering – for the audit of Byzantine tax returns submitted by large corporations and wealthy people. Until recently, the IRS had lacking these experts, and many complex tax returns remained invisible. With the help of people such as Nershi, IRS can recoup millions and sometimes more than a billion dollars at one tax return.
But on February 20, three months shy to end the probationary and become a full -time employee, the IRS fired him. As a veteran of the Military Fleet, Nershi loved to work in public service and hoped that he could be deprived of any mass firing. The non -written email states that he was fired for the performance, although he received high marks from his ruler.
As for the report he completed, he would probably pay off many times more than the low -level salary he earned. The report will now be unfinished.
Nershi agreed that the federal government could be more slim and effective, but it was embarrassed by the decision to dismiss highly qualified IRS specialists, such as he, even according to the logic of the government’s Department of Government, was the government. “By turning us off, you are going to reduce how much profit the country brings,” Nershi said in an interview. “It was not about saving money.”
Since his post, President Donald Trump and his chief billionaire advisor Musk have launched a general blitz to cut costs and reduce the federal government. Trump, Moscow and other administration leaders not only say that the US government is swollen and ineffective, but they also see it as a bastion of political opposition, calling it a “deep state”.
The strategy used by the Trump administration to reduce the size of the government was a disassembly and far -reaching, it was necessary to expel public servants as soon as possible to as soon as possible, while demoralizing workers who remain at work. As a Russell Uss, the director of the Trump’s White House management department and the 2025 project, speaking in the speech First reported PROPUBLICA and documentary: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. If they wake up in the morning, we want them not to want to go to work because they are increasingly regarded as the villains.”
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One of the tactics used by the administration is to target the test workers who are easier to shoot because they have less protection for public service. In this context, the probationary term means only that employees are new to their roles, not that they are beginners or insufficient work. Propublica found that the latest IRS firing was swept by highly skilled and experienced test workers who recently joined the government or moved to a new post from another agency.
At the end of February, the Trump administration started firing more than 6,000 IRS employees. The agency suffered particularly tough, current and former employees, as it spent 2023, preparing for the hiring of thousands of new customer service and service, and only began to hire and train these workers on any scale in 2024, which means that many of these new employees remained in the test period. Last spring, nervous was hired in this wave. The ruling happened after Congress underfunded the agency For most of the last decade, which led to a chronic lack of staffing, gloomy customer service and reducing the audit rate, especially for taxpayers who earned $ 500,000 or more per year.
It seems that the administration does not want to stop there. These are plans for drawing up To cut all the labor force in halfAccording to reports.
Unlike other federal agencies, reducing IRS means that the government raises less money and finds less tax violations. Economic research They showed that for each dollar spent by the IRS, the agency returns from $ 5 to $ 12, depending on what profit the taxpayer stated. In a report by 2024, a non -partisan government responsibility showed that the IRS showed a $ 13,000 savings for each additional hour, which has been carried out by the tax returns of very wealthy taxpayers -the profitability of investments that “leave the hedge -fond”, according to the words “,” Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy.
John Koskinen, who led the IRS from 2013 to 2017, said in an interview that the broad reduction of the IRS does not make sense if Trump and Musk genuinely care about financial liability and the introduction of waste, fraud and abuse. “What I never understood is if you are interested in deficit and restraint, why would you cut on the side of profits?” said Koskanen.
Neither the IRS nor the White House answered the comment requests. Last month, asked Musk his followers On the X, the platform he owns, let them “like” @doge “to check the IRS, citing the US law and engineers team. DOGE staff sought gain access According to the White House press secretary, the IRS taxpayers to “illuminate the fraud”.
For this story, Propublica interviewed more than a dozen current and former IRS employees. Most of these people worked in a major business and international agency department (LB & I), which audits companies with more than $ 10 million in assets and high -income individuals. As part of the IRS, the LB & I Division has the highest profitability of investment, and extensive cuts there put in sharp aids human and financial cost of the Trump administration to reduce state functions in the name of saving money and combating waste and fraud.
According to the current and former employees of the LB & I, the taxpayers they conducted included pharmaceutical companies, oil and gas companies, construction firms and large technology corporations, as well as more unclear private corporations and high value people. None of the IRS staff who talked to PROPBLICA reveals specific taxpayers, citing privacy laws.
From the recent influx of financing, according to employees, the management of the LB and I pushed not only more agents on income and evaluators, but also specialized employees, such as oil engineers, computer scientists and experts in corporate partnerships. These employees, as a rule, are internally known as general engineers, consulted on difficult tax return and helped determine whether taxpayers correctly claim certain loans or other tax benefits.
This work has occurred when large companies have stated a healthy tax loan that is legal avenue to find tax benefits but may also be incorrectly used. Highly skilled assessors also paid great savings in cases related Syndically Service Service . “Dirty Ten” Tax scams.
“These are cases where income agents do not have technical experience,” said one IRS engineer, who still works in the agency and which, like other IRS staff, had no right to talk to the media. “That’s what we do. We are working on things where the experience is absolutely necessary. “
The current and former IRS staff reported propublica that the agency has spent a huge amount of resources on the set and training of new professionals in recent years. Vanessa Rolinz, an IRS Chicago engineer recently fired, stated that test staff at LB & I exceeded the number of full -time employees in their office. Most of her team’s work was focused on teaching and mentors for the waves of new staff – most of whom have recently been fired. “The whole office was oriented around, bringing us to teaching,” Rolinz said.
These specialists said they received higher salaries compared to many other IRS employees. But the money that these specialists occupied as a result of their work was an order of magnitude greater than they cost. The current engineer told Propublica that over the past four years, they have estimated that their team had less than 10 billion dollars in adjusted tax return. (On the contrary, a Analysis of Wall Street Journal Posted on February 22, showed that Dodge has found a $ 2.6 billion in Dodge next year, which is much less than $ 55 billion stated by Doge.)
The former LB & I revenue agent added that their work did not always lead to the IRS returned money from the taxpayer; Sometimes they carried out a refund only to find out that the taxpayer was borrowed more than they expected.
“The IRS mission is to treat taxpayers rightly so that they pay the tax they are legally obliged, including making sure that they do not pay more than legally required,” the former income agent said.
Despite its profitability of investments and a sense of duty supported by its employees, LB & I were badly affected by the last wave of firing, staff said. According to the current IRS engineer, Trump’s administration appears to have excluded jobs about 120 pounds and and engineers from a total of approximately 260. The person said he had heard that more cessions were expected soon. Acting IRS chief and long -time leader of the O’Donnell Agency, announced his retirement against the background of shooting.
Several LB & I staff said Prapublica that mass layoffs were ordered from a very high level and that several layers did not imagine what they were going and what to expect. According to the staff, according to the staff, they do not distinguish employees with certain specialties or level of execution, and instead were focused solely on whether they were on the test status. “It did not matter the skill set. If they were up to a year, they were reduced,” said another current LB & I employee, said Propublica.
The current and former IRS staff said the proposal for layoffs and delayed resignation have led to situations that have destroyed decades of experience and institutional knowledge that cannot be easily replaced. Jack McCur was the senior LB & I assessor in Seattle, who was fired approximately six weeks before the end of his test status. He said he not only lost his job, but also a veteran assessor who was his teacher, received early pension. McCumber and his teacher often worked on the syndered conservative affairs of the service, which could pay off tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars. “They are pushing experienced people, and they are pushing people like me,” Maccur said. “This is a double rampage.”
As a result, according to employees and experts, corporations will mean, and wealthy people face a much smaller check when they provide their tax returns, which will lead to more risk and less money coming to the US Treasury.
“Big businesses and people with higher content in the land is where you have the most difficult taxpayers and the most difficult tax remedies and attorneys that push the envelope as far as they can,” Koskenin said, a former IRS commissioner. “If these checks stop because there is no one to make them, people say, ‘Hey, I did it last year, I will do it again this year.”
“If you pull up the IRS,” Koskanen added. “It’s just a tax reduction for taxes.”
