IRS halts layoffs and plans to bring back workers as tax season looms

• The IRS follows several other federal agencies that have tried to rehire terminated workers or pull back on "reduction in force," or RIF, plans.

Zoom in: Workers who took deferred resignation, and have been sitting idle for months drawing salary, are being told they can come back to work — without any repercussions.

• At the same time, 50 employees in the IRS Taxpayer Experience Office learned this week that their planned firing is no longer happening, a worker inside the agency confirmed to Axios.
• Government Executive first reported the changes.
• "IRS has identified critical vacancies that need to be filled and is exercising its discretion to offer you the opportunity to rescind your Deferred Resignation Program/Treasury Deferred Resignation Program (DRP/TDRP) agreement," reads the text of one of the emails, reviewed by Axios, that went out to employees. (DRP is short for deferred resignation program.)
• "You are invited to express your interest in rescinding DRP/TDRP agreement."
• The Washington Post also reported on the email.

Zoom out: The about-face comes as the agency heads into a busy tax filing season, when it will need to adopt the many changes put in place by the "big, beautiful bill."

• The White House had already asked for increased funding to hire more people to help with customer service.
• The agency had also reversed course on some firings of probationary workers in May, the Post reported.
• A spokesperson for the Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS, said in a statement to Axios that "we are committed to ensuring the agency is staffed appropriately to serve the American people effectively and efficiently."
• "We are pleased that the administration now realizes it cannot afford to lose more of these trained, nonpartisan professionals," Doreen Greenwald, national president of the union that represents IRS workers, said in a statement.

The big picture: Earlier this summer, the agency's independent taxpayer advocate warned that the coming tax filing season was at risk given the sharp drop in staff at the agency.

• The IRS lost 26% of its staff this year, going from 102,000 employees to fewer than 76,000 (accounting for those who accepted the early resignation offer but are still being paid), the advocate reported.
• It went through two rounds of deferred resignations.

Between the lines: Agencies have been rehiring, canceling RIFs or posting new job listings to manage the fallout from the chainsaw approach taken in the early months of the Trump administration.

• Those with specific expertise, like bird flu response workers and those who maintain the country's nuclear arsenal, were rehired after a public uproar.
• Fired workers at the FDA were also called back, as the Post reported.
• Other agencies, like the Social Security Administration, have reassigned staff to cover mission-critical roles or posted fresh job listings.

The initial layoff and deferred resignation process throughout the federal government was done without rationality or planning, says Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that advocates to improve the federal government.

• "They realize that they're getting rid of people that they actually really need."