IRS Authorized to Hire Thousands for 2026 Filing Season After Staffing Cuts

Under a January 2025 presidential memorandum, the IRS froze hiring while shedding roughly 27 percent of its workforce over the year. In December 2025, senators pressed Treasury to lift the freeze before the 2026 filing season. In a late-February 2026 internal memo to Treasury, IRS Chief Human Capital Officer Alex Kweskin wrote that the agency had "seen massive cuts to its staff in 2025" and that "ongoing staffing shortages put the 2026 Filing Season at risk"; the IRS requested and received special authority to hire 8,000 employees on an expedited basis. Publicly, agency leaders said the opposite. IRS chief executive Frank Bisignano said in March, "I feel good about the number of employees I have right now," told Fox Business in April there was "no staffing shortage," and told Congress in May he had "zero staffing concerns." Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent testified in early June that concerns about the cuts were "a complete fallacy." On June 17, Bisignano wrote to minority staff that the freeze had been lifted and that the IRS was "executing the approved staffing plan." On July 22, Warren and 13 colleagues opened an investigation into whether Bisignano had misled Congress about the staffing shortage.