What Is Happening with the IRS?

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is slowly moving through all the government agencies. According to Fred Lucas at The Daily Signal, the cuts being made in the Internal Revenue Service “is consistent with the federal government’s earlier findings about excessive expenses within the tax collecting agency.”

Lucas reported that the Trump administration is on track to “close more than 110 IRS offices across the country.” This follows closely the report from Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) that “a majority of IRS offices are less than half full.”

Lucas quoted Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform as saying that DOGE is looking at “long-standing problems.” 

“They like to say this is a political thing and that Elon Musk doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But the waste at the IRS and empty buildings is all documented by inspector general reports,” Norquist told The Daily Signal. “For the people who say it’s not real unless the government says it’s real, well the government has already spoken about these empty buildings.”

Office space accounted for one of the biggest IRS expenses, the report noted.

“According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), it will spend approximately $600 million on real estate costs in fiscal year (FY) 2024,” the inspector general’s report says. “This includes 516 office buildings totaling approximately 22.3 million square feet. After personnel, rent is one of the IRS’s largest operating expenses.”

The General Services Administration announced in coordination with DOGE the list for terminating leases of government office space. The list includes a 135,000-square-foot IRS facility in Franklin, Tennessee; a 26,000-square-foot facility in Bloomington, Minnesota; a 25,000-square-foot office in Mesa, Arizona; and several other large facilities in San Marcos, California; Glendale, Arizona; and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Excess office space at the IRS cost taxpayers almost $11 million a year, according to the inspector general….

The IRS reduced its overall space footprint by about 2 million square feet since 2018, yet 51% of all IRS buildings “had a workstation occupancy rate of 50% or less,” the 2024 report said.

“The low occupancy rate is due in part to the increased use of telework and remote work, which requires less space per employee,” the report said. “Additionally, the IRS lacks a long-term space reduction plan that clearly specifies the space reductions it expects to achieve annually beyond FY 2026 and how it will sufficiently decrease its unneeded office space.”

President Donald Trump recently ordering employees who are working remotely to return to the office could be a mitigating factor. But the 2024 inspector general’s report noted the Office of Management and Budget flagged excess building use in 2015, predating the COVID-19 pandemic that led to mass federal telework….

Spokespersons for the IRS and the Treasury’s Inspector General for Tax Administration did not respond to inquiries for this story.