Elon Musk’s chainsaw-approach to shrinking federal agencies has rapidly proven to be pennywise and pound foolish — with officials warning on Friday that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) expects a 10% drop in tax revenue collected by April 15. The reason: the recent layoff of 20,000 IRS workers, among them tax collectors and auditors, has emboldened “an increasing number of individuals and businesses [to] spurn filing their taxes or attempt to skip paying balances owed.”
The staff cuts have already forced the agency to drop cases against “high-value” — in other words, wealthy — “corporations and individuals.” The tax revenue lost after Musk’s staff cuts could total to $500 billion — a sum enormously larger than the amount of government spending Musk’s team claims to have pared back.
This continues to be the biggest story in the country: DOGE has already squandered half a trillion dollars in 6 weeks. Not billion. half a trillion, $500 billion talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/irs-p…
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) 2025-03-24T15:20:07.318Z
- Tax revenue could drop by 10 percent amid turmoil at IRS [The Washington Post]