The IRS Moved IT and HR Staff to Process Taxes. It’s Not Going Well.

The IRS tapped information technology and human resources staff with no experience in taxpayer services to process returns this year, starting them off with nine weeks of classroom training to prepare them for the new roles.

They listened to tedious lectures for eight hours a day, five days a week, according to several employees detailed to process tax returns. When it came time to take their assessments, they said, it was difficult to retain all the information their instructors had offered.

Many people didn’t: At least several hundred of the more than 1,000 employees on the details failed their initial certification exams, agency officials told staff in a recent town hall meeting, a transcript of which was obtained by NOTUS.

Some of these reassigned employees could face disciplinary action if they fail to improve their results. All of them are facing an uncertain future at the agency — including what could be a long-term move to roles they never wanted.

Staff who were moved to taxpayer services had primarily worked in high-level IT and HR jobs, and told NOTUS they found the training for entry-level work demeaning and boring.

“While entry-level work is better than no work, myself, like others, didn’t build a career in IT to process tax returns while having no idea the term,” one reassigned employee said.

The IRS reassigned the employees to the entry-level work of processing taxpayer documents earlier this year after workforce cuts led to a crunch ahead of tax filing season.

The IRS has shed around 25,000 employees — about a quarter of its workforce — since President Donald Trump took office, mostly by offering incentives for staff to leave. More than 8,000 of the departed employees worked in processing tax returns, providing customer service by phone or in person, or in other roles directly related to filing season. The IRS had hoped the reassignments would help stabilize its most public-facing operations in the wake of those cuts.

Joe Ziegler, whom the Trump administration promoted to senior advisor at the IRS after he alleged to Congress the agency had mishandled Hunter Biden’s taxes, told reassigned employees during the recent town hall that they should appreciate their new roles out of love for the organization.

“I know I’ve heard from a lot of people that this is low-grade work. ‘It’s not what I need to be doing,’” Ziegler said, according to the transcript. “I need you guys to think about this from a different perspective.”

He said employees should approach their assignments “from a different mindset of, ‘how am I gonna do my job to the best of my abilities, because that’s what I want to do for the agency that I love: the IRS.’”

In a statement, the IRS said the certification process would ensure the reassigned employees have the skills they need to “deliver quality service” to taxpayers, and those who failed their tests would receive further coaching. It did not address the potential for disciplinary action.

“The Internal Revenue Service is focused on providing the best possible experience for taxpayers and employees,” the agency said, adding the reassignments “are helping improve service for taxpayers.”

The IT and HR employees detailed to process tax returns weren’t in place before the April 15 filing deadline that marks the end of the IRS’s busiest time of the year, even if they received their certification on the first try. Most still aren’t fully trained.

Those who failed the initial certification exam will have a second chance, the IRS said. If they fail that as well, the IRS said it would allow them to work cases without assistance to prove their aptitude.

Three IRS employees on the details said few of those workers passed their second test. In addition to the threat of discipline, agency officials said employees would have their overall performance evaluated on how active and cooperative they were during their training.

Alex Kweskin, the head of human resources at the IRS, told employees last month he sympathized with their situations.

“I know that it’s a challenge to be detailed,” Kweskin said. “We recognize the challenging year that it has been.”

Kweskin told the reassigned employees they could apply to other job openings in the IRS if they were not happy, or leave the agency altogether.

“We don’t want to handicap you in any sort of way to hold you into the detail,” Kweskin said.

Ziegler told employees, however, that they could not return to their old jobs and their initial 120-assignments would be extended. Officials said they would assess the state of the agency’s case backlog, which has been in place for several years, before deciding how long the involuntary details would continue.

Several employees said they expect the assignments to eventually be made permanent and speculated the agency was looking to push them out without the complexities that accompany government layoffs.

“Nobody feels confident in what they’re doing,” another employee on the detail said, echoing others who said their training included too much information packed into too little time. “It’s a nightmare, and that’s an understatement.”

A third reassigned employee said the details were a “disaster” that were unlikely to help the agency.

“Many trainees do not know their way around a basic tax form, let alone more complex ones,” the IRS employee said. “I think most of us use a platform like TurboTax [to file our own taxes].”