Roughly 1,500 Human Resources and IT employees at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) who have been detailed to taxpayer services for the last four months will be extended on that detail for at least another 120 days, according to Joseph Ziegler, IRS Chief of Internal Consulting. Most temporary assignment details were set to expire in June.

The purpose of these details – which could be extended again – is to cover frontline tax filing season work, including a backlog in amended tax returns.

“We saw a need in the IRS, and the need was within taxpayer services. It was to make a better tax filing season,” Ziegler said.

The employees who have been tapped for this detail, who had no prior experience with taxpayer services work, have been receiving training for the last several months. These employees can apply for other positions within IRS if they are not content with their current detail, but they cannot return to their earlier roles.

“You guys are on a detail right now,” Ziegler said. “Going back to that position is not available right now to you.”

According to the National Taxpayer Advocate, the IRS reduced its staff in virtually all of its functions, including taxpayer services, by 27 percent in 2025, beginning the year with 102,000 employees and ending with approximately 74,000.

Government-wide approximately 317,000 feds left federal service in 2025, according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), including approximately 154,000 via the Deferred Resignation Program, in what OPM called the largest reduction of the federal workforce in American history. The federal government hired approximately 68,000 new feds over that timeframe.