特朗普政府裁减数千名员工，更换几位临时领导，国税局面临动荡

【中美创新时报2025 年 4 月 24 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）几十年来，美国国税局一直以一支古怪、平淡、近乎无聊的会计师队伍而闻名，他们负责执行一项不受欢迎的任务：收集为联邦政府提供资金的资金。如今，该机构正因另一个原因而迅速声名狼藉：混乱。《波士顿环球报》记者山姆·布罗迪对此作了下述报道。

特朗普总统的回归以及他重塑政府的积极举措，尤其激怒了严肃的税收机构，该机构过去的活动曾引起保守派的愤怒。

事情开始于今年 1 月特朗普就职典礼前夕，当时的美国国税局局长丹尼·沃费尔 (Danny Werfel)宁愿辞职也不愿被特朗普解雇，因为特朗普已经提名自己人选来管理该机构。

仅凭这一进展，就足以让许多熟悉该机构的人感到震惊。这是因为，由前总统乔·拜登提名的韦费尔，其任期还不到两年，而法律规定，他的国税局局长任期为五年。

但几乎没有人预料到接下来会发生什么：接下来的三任国税局代理局长突然离职，其中一些原因是政策分歧或政府内部沟通不畅。该机构目前已在几个月内更换了第四位临时负责人，而特朗普的提名人、前共和党众议员比利·朗仍在等待参议院的确认听证会。

更糟糕的是，在埃隆·马斯克领导的政府效率部（DGEP）的推动下，美国国税局出现了前所未有的员工流失。该部门最初裁掉了7000名国税局员工，但据报道，另有2万人接受了特朗普为联邦雇员提供的买断方案。（该部门今年年初拥有10万名员工。）

熟悉国税局内部运作的人士表示，不稳定的气氛可能会损害该机构履行基本职责的能力——这是一个令人担忧的前景，因为如果没有征收的资金，联邦政府将陷入瘫痪。

“这些官员的离职、国税局面临的压力以及高层的变动，显然会让运营变得更加困难，并削弱国税局履行职责的能力，”曾在巴拉克·奥巴马总统任期最后三年和特朗普总统任期第一年担任国税局局长的约翰·科斯金 (John Koskinen) 表示。

税务监督人员，如无党派组织“纳税人常识”的主席斯蒂芬·埃利斯，也对国税局的情况可能产生广泛影响感到担忧。

“纳税人应该享有一个正常运转的国税局，”埃利斯说，“但现在，它却举步维艰。”

负责监管美国国税局的财政部发言人没有回应置评请求。

与美国国税局的骚动密不可分的是，特朗普政府试图扭曲税收制度，以服务于其议程。今年4月，特朗普政府采取行动，授权移民和海关执法局（ ICE）向国税局索取他们计划驱逐的无证移民的信息，而此前这项授权是被禁止的。

此前，DOGE于2月份试图获取该机构严密保护的敏感纳税人信息数据库，此举引起许多人担忧。此后，DOGE获取的信息有所减少，但批评人士仍对此举表示担忧。

与此同时，特朗普希望 剥夺哈佛大学的免税地位——据报道，政府内部正在考虑这一举措——这将违反现行禁止总统命令国税局进行特定审计的法律。

保守派智库传统基金会的经济学家 EJ Antoni 怀疑该机构目前的混乱状况是否会产生更广泛的影响。

他说：“就征收收入的能力而言……无论谁担任专员，很多事情都会发生。”他还认为，该机构面临的更大挑战是对其过时的电信基础设施进行现代化改造。

但其他税务专家担心，这些发展——加上特朗普建议用关税取代所得税等——可能会共同破坏公众对税收制度的信任。

北卡罗来纳州立大学会计学教授内森·戈德曼表示：“几乎每周我们都会看到一些新的事情，对现有的税收结构产生怀疑。”

尽管 DOGE 已经疏远了许多 IRS 员工，但该项目的支持者认为，对于一个有时难以适应快速变化的技术环境的机构来说，尤其需要采取积极主动的方式来实现现代化。

担任美国国税局 DOGE 负责人的初创公司创始人 Sam Corcos 最近表示，他的团队已经取消了价值 15 亿美元的合同，这些合同“让我们陷入了计算机编程结构复杂性的死亡螺旋”。

但这种动荡以一种独特的方式影响了美国国税局，该局重视其相对无党派的文化，并且严重依赖职业公务员。

韦费尔的辞职被视为一个不祥的开端。在他缺席期间，国税局职业官员道格拉斯·奥唐纳（Douglas O’Donnell）接任临时领导。但2月25日，他宣布退休，而此前不久，据报道，DOGE的助手们刚刚入职该局。

梅兰妮·克劳斯曾任退伍军人事务部内部监督员，后迅速升任国税局首席数据官，并接任第二任代理局长。但到了4月8日，她决定辞职，以抗议与ICE共享移民税务信息的决定。

随后，4 月 15 日，政府任命了美国国税局刑事调查部门特工加里·沙普利 (Gary Shapley)，他最出名的是在 2023 年站出来指控拜登政府对总统儿子亨特的税务调查进展缓慢。

此次聘任对机构内部人士来说是一个重大惊喜。“当他们宣布加里·沙普利是新任局长时，所有人的反应都是‘什么鬼？’”一位接受了延期辞职买断的国税局官员说道，由于无权公开发言，该官员要求匿名。“他根本就不在名单上。”

沙普利上任后不久，就有新闻媒体报道称，美国国税局正在考虑取消哈佛大学的免税资格。此前，“哈佛大学在免税资格问题上还没有引起任何人的关注，”国税局官员说道。

但据《纽约时报》报道，沙普利受聘消息公布三天后，他被撤职，原因是马斯克并未就此举征求财政部长斯科特·贝森特的意见。相反，马斯克直接向特朗普请求提拔沙普利。

自今年1月以来，第四位代理局长是迈克尔·福肯德，他目前担任财政部副部长。福肯德曾在特朗普第一任期内担任财政部官员，深受两党专家的好评，但他面临着一项艰巨的任务：平衡财政部繁重的日常工作和管理国税局的各项工作。

在X 上的一篇帖子中，贝森特表示“必须重新让人们信任国税局”，并表示他相信福肯德“是目前合适的人选”。

拜登政府的一些经济政策官员仍然关注着美国国税局的运作，并对该机构更换领导、裁减员工感到震惊。

“这是人们工作中最混乱、最疯狂的环境，”曾任前财政部长珍妮特·耶伦顾问的娜塔莎·萨林说道。“我真的很担心税务机构的稳定性，因为他们正在如此迅速地流失如此多的人员，这实际上将已经濒临崩溃的税务系统推向了崩溃的边缘，使其服务纳税人和征税的能力岌岌可危。”

除此之外，研究一直表明，对国税局的投资可以通过改善税收执法带来额外回报。专家认为，大幅缩减机构规模可能会导致其无法提供预期的收入来维持政府运营，这可能是灾难性的后果。

4月15日刚刚结束的报税季，并没有出现任何明显的重大问题。然而，许多专家担心领导层和员工的流失可能对明年的报税流程造成影响。“归根结底，纳税人服务可能会大幅倒退，”科斯金说。

“我不知道这笔钱会不会在今年报税时体现出来，”纳税人常识组织（Taxpayers For Common Sense）的埃利斯在谈到目前国税局的混乱局面时说道。“但在未来，你不可能失去这么多的组织知识和历史，而不产生一些负面影响。”

题图：位于华盛顿特区的美国国税局总部Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg

附原英文报道：

Shedding thousands of staff and several interim leaders, the IRS faces turmoil under Trump

By Sam Brodey Globe Staff,Updated April 23, 2025 

The Internal Revenue Service headquarters in Washington, D.C. Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg

WASHINGTON — For decades, the Internal Revenue Service has cultivated a reputation as a force of wonky, drama-free, and borderline-boring accountants who fulfill the unpopular task of collecting the cash that fuels the federal government.

These days, the agency is quickly developing a reputation for something else: chaos.

The return of President Trump, and his aggressive campaign to remake the government, has particularly roiled the sober tax collection agency whose activity in the past has drawn the ire of conservatives.

It began on the eve of Trump’s inauguration in January, when then-IRS commissioner Danny Werfel resigned rather than be fired by Trump, who had already named his own pick to run the agency.

That development alone was shocking to many familiar with the agency. That’s because Werfel — nominated by former President Joe Biden — was less than two years into his five-year term stipulated by law for IRS commissioners.

But few predicted what came next: abrupt departures by the next three acting IRS commissioners, some fueled by policy disagreements or reported miscommunication within the administration. The agency is now on its fourth interim leader in as many months, as Trump’s nominee, former Republican representative Billy Long, still awaits a Senate confirmation hearing.

Making the situation more dire is an unprecedented exodus at the staff level, spurred on by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. It initially laid off 7,000 IRS employees, but an additional 20,000 have reportedly taken Trump’s buyout offer for federal workers. (The agency had 100,000 employees at the start of the year.)

Those familiar with the IRS’s inner workings say the climate of instability could harm the agency’s ability to fulfill its basic duties — an alarming prospect, given that the federal government would be paralyzed without the dollars it collects.

“The departures, the pressure on the IRS, the changes at the top, are clearly going to make operations much more difficult and impede the ability of the IRS to meet its responsibility,” said John Koskinen, who was IRS commissioner for the last three years of Barack Obama’s presidency and the first year of Trump’s.

Tax watchdogs like Stephen Ellis, president of the nonpartisan group Taxpayers For Common Sense, share the alarm that the situation at the IRS could have wide-ranging consequences.

“Taxpayers deserve a functioning IRS,” said Ellis, “and right now, it is flailing.”

A spokesperson for the Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS, did not respond to a request for comment.

Inseparable from the tumult at the IRS is the Trump administration’s desire to bend the tax system to serve its agenda. In April, the administration moved to empower Immigration and Customs Enforcement to request information from the IRS about undocumented migrants they are targeting for deportation, which was not previously allowed.

That move came after DOGE alarmed many in February by pushing for access to the agency’s tightly guarded database of sensitive taxpayer information. It has since obtained more limited information, but critics remain concerned about the effort.

Meanwhile, Trump’s desire to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status — reportedly under consideration within the administration — would trample the existing law barring presidents from ordering the IRS to conduct specific audits.

EJ Antoni, an economist at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, doubted the agency’s current disorder would have wider impacts.

“In terms of the ability to collect revenue . . . a lot of that goes on regardless of who is in the role” of commissioner, he said, and argued that the agency’s bigger challenge is modernizing its outdated telecommunications infrastructure.

But other tax experts worry that these developments — combined with things like Trump’s suggestion that tariffs could replace income taxes — could come together to undermine public trust in the tax system.

“It’s on a seemingly weekly basis we see something new that casts doubt on the existing tax structure,” said Nathan Goldman, an accounting professor at North Carolina State University.

While DOGE has alienated many IRS staff, supporters of the project have argued that an aggressive approach is particularly needed to modernize an agency that has struggled at times to adapt to a rapidly changing technological environment.

Sam Corcos, a startup founder serving as DOGE lead at the IRS, said recently that his team had canceled $1.5 billion worth of contracts that were “putting us down this death spiral of complexity” in the structure of their computer programming.

But the turbulence lands in a unique way at the IRS, which prizes its relatively nonpartisan culture and relies heavily on career civil servants.

The resignation of Werfel was seen as an ominous start. In his absence, Douglas O’Donnell, a career IRS official, stepped in as interim leader. But on Feb. 25, he announced his retirement, not long after DOGE aides had reportedly landed at the bureau.

Melanie Krause, a former internal watchdog at the Veterans’ Affairs Department who quickly rose to be the IRS chief data officer, stepped in as the second acting commissioner. But by April 8, she had decided to resign, in protest of the decision to share immigrants’ tax information with ICE.

Then, on April 15, the administration tapped Gary Shapley, an agent in the IRS criminal investigations division, who was best known for coming forward in 2023 to allege that the Biden administration was slow-walking its tax investigation into the president’s son Hunter.

The hire was a major surprise to agency insiders. “When they announced it was Gary Shapley, everyone’s reaction was just, ‘What the [expletive]?’ ” said an IRS official who took the deferred resignation buyout and was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “He was just nowhere on the list.”

It was soon after Shapley came in that news outlets reported the IRS was exploring the removal of Harvard’s tax-exempt status. To that point, “Harvard was on no one’s radar screen for issues about tax-exempt status,” the IRS official said.

But three days after Shapley’s hire became public, he was withdrawn as acting commissioner, because Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had not been consulted about the move, according to The New York Times. Instead, Musk had directly appealed to Trump to elevate Shapley.

The fourth acting commissioner since January is Michael Faulkender, who serves as deputy secretary of the Treasury. A former Treasury official in Trump’s first term, Faulkender is well-regarded by experts on both sides, but he has a challenging task ahead: balancing a grueling day job at Treasury with the demands of running the IRS.

In a post on X, Bessent said “trust must be brought back to the IRS” and expressed his confidence that Faulkender “is the right man for the moment.”

Some economic policy officials from the Biden administration remain attentive to the IRS’s workings and have been stunned to see the agency cycle through leaders and shed staff.

“It’s the most chaotic, frenetic environment for people to be working in,” said Natasha Sarin, who was a counselor to former Treasury secretary Janet Yellen. “I’m really concerned about the stability of the agency because they’re losing so much capacity so quickly in a way that truly pushes the tax system, which is already at the brink, over the brink with respect to its ability to serve taxpayers and collect taxes.”

Beyond that, studies have consistently shown that investment in the IRS yields back additional returns through improved tax enforcement. A significantly downsized agency, experts believe, could fall short in providing expected revenue to run the government — a potentially disastrous outcome.

There have been no major apparent hiccups in the tax filing season that just ended on April 15. Many experts are concerned, however, about what the leadership and staff churn could mean for next year’s tax filing process. “The bottom line is, taxpayer service is likely to regress significantly,” said Koskinen.

“I don’t know if it’s going to show up this tax year,” said Ellis, with Taxpayers For Common Sense, of the current IRS muddle. “But in the future, you can’t lose that amount of organizational knowledge and history and not have some negative impact.”