We all wonder how and how many employees from the IRS are going to be affected by the shutdown of the US Administration.
It’s somewhat uncertain, because the IRS has prepared a contingency (“shutdown”) plan that tries to keep operations going, at least initially — so the number of affected employees depends on how long the shutdown lasts.
What the IRS plan says
The IRS currently has about 74,300 employees (adjusted for recent “deferred resignation” cuts) according to its contingency plan. Under that plan, all of those employees would be in “pay status” (i.e. expected to remain working, with pay) for up to 5 business days after a shutdown begins, by tapping into multi-year funding (e.g. from the Inflation Reduction Act) to bridge the funding lapse.
After that initial 5 days, if the shutdown continues, the plan does not clearly specify how many employees would be furloughed or sent off — or how many would continue as “excepted” (i.e. required to work without pay) — once the bridging funds run out.
The IRS contingency plan mentions that “nearly 75,000 employees are considered ‘pay status’ workers, while 407 employees are shown as ‘non-pay status.’”
What “affected” might mean & possible scale.
“Affected” could include furloughed employees, those forced to work without pay, or those whose duties are curtailed. If the shutdown is short (≤ 5 days), the IRS expects minimal immediate impact on its workforce under its current plan, but if it drags on, many employees could be furloughed or otherwise impacted.
Also, the IRS has already undergone staff reductions earlier in the year: its workforce has shrunk from over 100,000 to about 77,428 as of May 2025, due to resignations and cuts.
How can you be affected if you have already filed your tax return.
The first challenge that many clients encounter is that the Spanish Post Office confirms, if you have sent it by “certified mail,” that their envelope has not arrived at the IRS and that it has been lost along the way… what really tends to happen is that from the moment the envelope enters the USA, Spanish Post Office loses the ability to track the envelope with the return and tells you that it has been lost… What they really mean is that they don’t know where the envelope is, because they do not get any information from the US, and in our experience we know eventually arrives at the IRS, sooner or later. The normal delivery time of a certified letter to the USA is one month, the same as the letters that the IRS sends to us in Spain.
Normally, people want to send the return again, even though the IRS strongly insists that no one should send a return for a second time, because this can be very confusing for them and can end up delaying the processing time of the return for several more months, and it always ends in an audit of the return.
If a refund is expected and the return is resent, normally the payment will be delayed more than two months, from the moment the IRS receives the second return.
If the taxpayer believes that their tax return has not arrived at the IRS, the first thing is to check its status in ID.me and in any case, wait a couple of months and try again to find out the status of the return by accessing ID.me again.
With fewer personnel, the IRS normally reduces staff among the officials who send the refunds and those who process the returns, therefore we recommend a lot of patience and check again at the ID.me around eight months before the date when the Tax Return was mailed to the IRS, to take any further solutions.
Summary
In the short term, during the next 5 days, almost all, more or less 74,000 IRS employees are planned to continue working under “pay status.”
After that, we don’t have a reliably published number of how many would be furloughed or forced to stop — that depends on how long the shutdown lasts and whether additional funding mechanisms or emergency measures are authorized.
Do not send the IRS a copy of your Tax returned filed even if the IRS has not received it. Be patient.
Please continue reading us for more updated information:
US Tax Consultants October 1st, 2025
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