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Trump admin broke rules with IRS firings: watchdog

The IRS broke its own rules when it fired thousands of employees earlier this year on the orders of the Trump administration, the Treasury Department found last week.

© Greg Nash

The terminated employees were not given proper notice, nor was their performance taken into account when getting rid of them, the office of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) concluded in a report released.

“Internal procedures were not followed when sending the termination notices. Policies and procedures require the IRS to give probationary employees a 30-day notice and consider their performance prior to terminating them,” TIGTA found.

In February, the IRS fired 6,700 employees designated as probationary, meaning they were working for the agency on a trial basis prior to becoming full staff members.

The hires were part of a large-scale overhaul of the agency initiated by Democrats in 2022 as part of their Inflation Reduction Act. That legislation awarded the agency an initial $80 billion funding boost to be spent over the subsequent decade.

More than half of the initial money — $45 billion — was earmarked for extra tax enforcement, specifically increased audits for wealthy Americans. The IRS even set up a new division to go after complex partnerships, or nested legal entities that can shelter funds that are owed to the government.

The Hill's Tobias Burns has more........

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