Tax season is here again in the United States and as millions of Americans file their 2024 taxes with the Internal Revenue Service, one of the questions most often asked is “Where is my refund?” The 2025 season officially kicked off January 27 and the IRS expects more than 140 million tax returns to be filed by the April 15 tax deadline.

The IRS has begun laying off more than 6,000 new and newly promoted employees across the country as part of the push to slash the federal government, sources say.

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 percent of the agency’s workforce in the midst of the busy tax-filing season.

Thousands of IRS employees were laid off, primarily affecting President Biden's expansion hires aimed at tax enforcement on wealthy taxpayers.