IRS cuts about 50 IT executives, sources say
The Internal Revenue Service on Friday placed around 50 IT executives on administrative leave, according to five sources familiar with the situation, the latest in the Trump administration’s gutting of the tax agency during the heart of filing season.
The decision to cut the IT executives was made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, according to one of the sources, and was carried out by acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause. Rajiv Uppal, the IRS’s chief information officer, and Kaschit Pandya, the agency’s chief technology officer, were not among the 50 dismissed staffers, a different source said.
The 50 people were at the senior executive service level, two sources said, and most were associate chief information officers. One of the sources, an IT executive who left the IRS earlier this month, said the 50 staffers include experts working on cybersecurity, modernization, applications, development, contracts, networks, mainframe and data center operations, among other IT-related areas.
An email sent to one of the affected employees Friday and viewed by FedScoop said they were being put on leave “effective immediately” and they were directed “not to perform any work-related tasks during this period.” They would continue to receive full pay and benefits during their administrative leave, per the email.
The IRS workforce has been targeted early and often by the Trump administration and DOGE. Roughly 7,000 probationary employees were reportedly laid off in February, and sources told The Associated Press earlier this month that the IRS was drafting plans to cut up to half of its 90,000-person staff. There were more than 8,000 IT staffers across the IRS, two sources said.
The recently departed IRS IT staffer told FedScoop that DOGE representatives have been consulting with the agency’s CTO and deputy CIOs, but are missing the “strategic” expertise of the next level of managers that have “the 100,000 foot view” of ongoing tech projects and priorities within the agency.
The IRS did not immediately respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
Billy Mitchell and Caroline Nihill contributed reporting.
