The IRS is preparing to get rid of half of its workforce, according to two media reports – part of a blitz by the Trump administration to reduce the size and scope of the federal government during its first hundred days in office.

Cutting IRS staffing in half over the next 10 months would mean less help and longer waits for many US taxpayers and increase the risk that wealthy tax cheats escape paying what they owe.It also would leave the Internal Revenue Service with its smallest workforce since at least the 1960s,