KANSAS CITY (AP) —The leases of roughly 120 Internal Revenue Service offices across the country will be terminated or allowed to expire, including sites that provide taxpayer services, according to a person familiar with the closures who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The latest plan to end leases of IRS offices — which include public-facing taxpayer service centers— comes in the middle of tax season, when the IRS expects more than 140 million tax returns to be filed by the April 15 deadline.
Last week, roughly 7,000 probationary IRS employees — who largely worked in compliance — were laid off in a move that experts and former workers say will likely mean reduced customer service and the end of the agency’s plan to go after high-wealth tax dodgers.
Some of the office closures are detailed on the DOGE website. The site states that leases for IRS sites in Knoxville, Tennessee; Beaumont, Texas; Sioux City, Iowa; Bend, Oregon; Salem, Oregon; Idaho Falls, Idaho; Brattleboro, Vermont; Hilo, Hawaii; and Lowell, Massachusetts have been or will be ended.n