IRS fires 6,000 employees as Donald Trump, Elon Musk slash US government A tearful executive at the U.S. Internal Revenue Service told staffers on Thursday that about 6,000 employees would be fired, a person familiar with the matter said, in a move that would eliminate roughly 6% of the agency's workforce in the midst of the busy tax-filing season. The cuts are part of President Donald Trump's sweeping downsizing effort that has targeted bank regulators , forest workers , rocket scientists and tens of thousands of other government employees. The effort is being led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, Trump's biggest campaign donor. Musk was on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, when Argentine President Javier Millei, known for wielding a chainsaw to illustrate his drastic policies slashing government spending, handed him one. "This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy," said Musk, hold...