‘Nobody knows anything.’ Displaced IRS staff move from one project to another with few details why

Mid-career IRS employees involuntarily moved to entry-level jobs they had no prior experience doing are getting new assignments, as part of the agency’s latest shakeup. 

The IRS in February put IT and human resources employees on 120-day details to work in taxpayer services. They were assigned entry-level roles answering inquiries from taxpayers and processing tax returns. The National Treasury Employees Union estimates that about 1,500 IRS employees were placed on these details. 

Many of these temporary details to taxpayer services were extended for another 120 days in May, but impacted employees weren’t sure what job – if any – they’d have with the agency in the long-term. Displaced IT employees have been told they aren’t allowed to return to the agency’s tech shop. 

That next role at the IRS is coming into focus. IRS employees moved off taxpayer services details are being reassigned to one of three “ONE IRS Readiness” teams. 

IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank Bisignano has repeatedly outlined his “One IRS” vision for running the agency more efficiently. Bisignano, who also serves as the Senate-confirmed commissioner of the Social Security Administration, also reassigned many SSA employees from field offices to answer calls to its 1-800 number. 

Bisignano told employees in a Jan. 12 meeting that “we should be able to move any talent wherever is the best place,” as part of a “One SSA” strategy.

Joseph Ziegler, the IRS’ chief of internal consulting, described this latest agency reorganization in an email to employees as a “Reporting and Organizational Correction.” 

“These corrections will serve as the basis for improved roster management, workload alignment, reporting integrity, and cross-business unit coordination,” Ziegler wrote in an email obtained by Government Executive.

The rollout of these changes, he told employees, “represents a major step forward in strengthening the accuracy and consistency of our foundational data” across the agency’s IT, human resources, and time and attendance systems. 

Government Executive reported last week that the IRS asked some on-detail employees to stay in taxpayer services for a third tour of duty. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration is investigating these temporary reassignments to taxpayer services as part of an audit of the agency’s attempts to reshape its workforce. 

“I don’t think many volunteered to extend their details a third time,” said one IRS employee who’s been reassigned to one of these new readiness teams. “Everyone’s old details have expired, so we are all starting fresh. I’m happy to finally have something to do.” 

Impacted employees have been assigned to one of three readiness teams. It’s not clear what work these teams will be performing or how team assignments have been decided. The IRS did not respond to requests for comment.

“Nobody knows anything else,” the IRS employee said. 

“Team A” will be led by Fred Wade, an IRS IT executive who oversaw the agency’s rollout of a modernized electronic tax filing platform. 

“Team B” will be led by Gregg Zurmühlen. His LinkedIn page states that he currently serves as the IRS’ director of enterprise cybersecurity operations and standards. 

“Team C” will be led by Adela Gresham, an IRS IT executive who recently returned to work after being placed on administrative leave for more than a year. 

“After being placed on administrative leave 15 months ago, I was not quite sure if I would or wanted to return to federal service. I was recently given an option and after much prayer, I decided to jump back in to continue the journey,” Gresham wrote in a recent LinkedIn post. 

Gresham is one of 50 IRS IT leaders the agency put on paid administrative leave in March 2025. Government Executive confirmed that another IRS IT executive previously placed on administrative leave has been brought back to work at the IRS. 

Treasury Chief Information Officer Sam Corcos defended putting these officials on administrative leave. In a podcast interview last October, he said the IRS “had poor technical leadership for roughly 40 years.”

The Trump administration spent nearly $10 billion placing more than 100,000 federal workers on paid administrative leave for extended periods last year, a sixfold increase from two years prior, according to the Government Accountability Office. That spike was driven largely by the administration’s deferred resignation program aimed at encouraging feds to quit public service.

A second IRS employee said he has also been assigned to a ONE IRS Readiness team after he was recently released from his detail to taxpayer services. 

“They let a few of us out, and then eventually they released even more people. Everybody was happy to get out. Most of the people who are still there, I don't know if they wanted to stay. You really had to raise some hell to even get out,” the employee said. 

The second IRS employee said he’s relieved to be done with his detail to taxpayer services, but he’s not sure what this new assignment will entail. 

“As soon as we got back from taxpayer services, they’re trying to send us off for another detail,” he said. 

The second IRS employee, who previously worked in IRS IT, said the agency’s tech shop is backfilling the jobs and his colleagues previously performed. 

IRS Chief Information Officer Kaschit Pandya said in March that his office planned to hire up to 175 IT employees, after permanently moving 1,200 employees out of the tech shop. Pandya said in February that the IRS lost 40% of its IT workforce and nearly 80% of its leadership last year.

“They hired people to replace us,” the second IRS employee said. “They really just disappeared us and threw us away.” 

The second IRS employee described his detail in taxpayer services as “chaos.” He said there was “no clear direction of who was actually your manager,” and that detailees were rushed into frontline roles with minimal training. 

“We were thrown directly into these IRS systems and processing tax returns. We had no idea of that – how to do it. The people who had been doing it had been doing it for years.” 

The second IRS employee said many full-time taxpayer services employees were “resentful” of detailees brought on to the same jobs, but retaining their old salaries. Detailees were making about two or three times what these frontline jobs normally pay. 

“Many of us were [GS]-13s, [GS]-14s, [GS]-15s,” the IRS employee said. “You had people who were [GS]-3s, [GS]-4s and [GS]-5s who were managing you, telling you what to do, and they had no idea of management.” 

The second IRS employee said workers placed on details were disproportionately racial minorities, women and people with disabilities. 

“The overwhelming majority of these people are black, brown, and minorities who have been just rushed off in this detail,” he said. 

The second IRS employee said he’s not clear why the agency keeps reassigning him, and why he was removed from his IT job in the first place. He said he chose a career in the federal government over the corporate world because of job stability – but said upheaval at the IRS has challenged that idea. 

“What is the point of this? What is the business purpose of this? It's just like DOGE,” he said. “All the savings they talked about, it wasn't real savings.”