type: timeline_event
On March 17, 2026, the Government Accountability Office released a report documenting the severe impact of DOGE-driven workforce reductions on the Internal Revenue Service during the heart of tax filing season. The IRS had shrunk from approximately 102,000 employees to roughly 74,000 — a 27 percent cut — leaving the agency at staffing levels not seen since October 2021, when it was already widely recognized as critically understaffed.
The consequences were immediate and measurable. Average processing time for paper tax returns increased from 27 days to 36 days, a 33 percent degradation. The number of customer service representatives available to answer taxpayer calls dropped by 22 percent. The GAO concluded that the workforce reductions were "not targeted or strategic" — meaning the cuts had not been designed to preserve essential functions or protect revenue collection, but had instead been applied broadly in ways that degraded core IRS capabilities across the board.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration corroborated the GAO's findings, noting that the IRS had been pushed back to staffing levels that predated the Inflation Reduction Act's investment in modernizing the agency. That 2022 legislation had provided $80 billion specifically to rebuild the IRS after years of neglect — funding that DOGE's cuts were now effectively reversing. The deputy inspector general warned that continued workforce erosion would compromise not only taxpayer services but also enforcement capabilities, potentially reducing federal revenue collection at a time of growing deficits.
The report illustrated a recurring pattern in DOGE's operations: indiscriminate workforce cuts that ignored the operational consequences of removing experienced personnel from complex systems. For the IRS, the result was a tax season marked by longer wait times, delayed refunds, and growing backlogs — outcomes that fell hardest on lower-income taxpayers who relied on paper filing and phone support, and who could least afford to wait for their refunds.