{"id":3118,"date":"2025-03-05T05:50:23","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T10:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/?p=3118"},"modified":"2026-06-30T03:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T07:22:16","slug":"elon-musk-irs-government-efficiency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/elon-musk-irs-government-efficiency\/3118\/","title":{"rendered":"$5.1 trillion in tax revenue collected in 2024 but Musk is now cutting 6,700 IRS workers who helped generate it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk is shaking things up as the head of DOGE and his latest plan may come with consequences that contradict his intentions<\/strong>. The power that United States President Donald Trump has given the polarizing tech billionaire and the value that he places on his ally’s opinion mean that Musk has the country’s economy in his hands, in a manner of speaking.<\/p>\n

The Department of Government Efficiency is tasked with saving the fed money, which is a worthwhile endeavor, but changes should be well-planned-out before implementing policies that have major consequences, especially those affecting ordinary citizens and their pockets.<\/p>\n

What have Elon Musk and DOGE done with staffing at the IRS?<\/h2>\n

It appears that Elon Musk’s style is to cut first and assess later, which is a trait that he and Trump appear to share. The state of the US economy is such that drastic and urgent measures need to be taken to aid in its recovery, which is all good and well, in theory.<\/p>\n

But experts believe that Musk’s latest move involving Internal Revenue Service staffing may actually end up costing the government money<\/strong> (and inconveniencing Americans as well). This would exacerbate the supposed economic crisis that the Trump administration claims is a national emergency.<\/p>\n

Which IRS workers are being laid off?<\/h3>\n

Musk has already started implementing his plan to lay off up to 6,700 employees of the Internal Revenue Service<\/strong>. These include more than 5,000 workers who handle auditing and collections, but IRS management claims that positions essential for the processing of the millions of tax returns for tax season 2025 have not been affected.<\/p>\n

Many of the workers being let go are probationary employees who have been working for the federal government for under a year, meaning they are not entitled to severance packages.<\/p>\n

While Musk was planning the IRS cuts, he was also busy advertising positions available at DOGE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How is Musk’s plan to lay off IRS workers going to cost the government money?<\/h2>\n

Experts explain that the money the IRS pays employees to process tax submissions pays for itself many times over. When tax enforcement is processed speedily, government takes in more revenue<\/strong> under the tax code.<\/p>\n

This may be only the beginning of changes within the Internal Revenue Service. Trump has proposed the formation of an “External Revenue Service” that would be funded by tariffs and may eventually replace the IRS.<\/p>\n

The idea is rather farfetched and it seems unlikely that such a state of affairs would come to pass. However, additional reductions of the IRS workforce may well lead to a decline in tax collections<\/strong>\u2014particularly those from the wealthiest sector of society\u2014leading to the fed losing money.<\/p>\n

When Biden allocated more resources to the IRS, tax revenue rose<\/h2>\n

The Biden administration invested in the US Internal Revenue Service in 2022 by hiring new agents and targeting the highest earning sector for enforcement. This was carried out under the Inflation Reduction Act, which included a funds injection of $80 billion over 10 years to cover tax enforcement functions. One of the strategies was the hiring of more IRS agents, and in the following two years, the workforce was boosted by the employment of more than 15,000 permanent workers.<\/p>\n

This brought with it a boom in tax revenue. Data from the IRS and the National Taxpayer Advocate indicates that collections went from $4.7 trillion in 2023 to $5.1 trillion<\/a><\/strong> in 2024.<\/p>\n

Musk and Trump aren’t interested in the figures<\/h3>\n

This was not enough to convince Trump’s Republican administration to at least leave the employment situation within the IRS as it was, and thousands of Americans are now without jobs. Perhaps Musk intends to make it up to them with a $5,000 DOGE Stimulus Check<\/a>. Regardless, reducing the IRS workforce at a time when revenues and efficiency were actually increasing may backfire, worsening the alleged economic emergency<\/strong> that Musk and Trump claim they want to solve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk is shaking things up as the head of DOGE and his latest plan may come with consequences that contradict his intentions. The power that United States President Donald Trump has given the polarizing tech billionaire and the value that he places on his ally’s opinion mean that Musk has the country’s economy in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3120,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_focus_keyword":"Elon Musk,IRS,Internal Revenue Service,DOGE,Department of Government Efficiency,Donald Trump,Republican administration,job layoffs,IRS job cuts","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"Elon Musk has suggested IRS job cuts in his capacity as the unofficial head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and it may not be a good plan.","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}