How many IRS clerks, management analysts and other administrative employees will face layoffs remains unclear, in part because the agency intends to offer $25,000 cash buyouts, early retirements and job transfers to the displaced workers.

With the realignment, which is limited to employees who work in IRS technology offices, the agency hopes to streamline some operations and make sure the right people with the right skills are in the right jobs, officials said.

"What we are really trying to do here is improve our performance without asking [Congress] for more money. That really is the bottom line," IRS Chief Information Officer Todd Grams said.

But Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said: "I call it a fire-hire plan because they have IRS employees who have been performing successfully in their jobs across the country, doing whatever the IRS said needed to be done. I don't know why they can't be retrained."

NTEU, which represents rank-and-file IRS employees, has not been given a cost-benefit analysis of the realignment and thinks it is premature for IRS to suggest that layoffs may be in order without studying all possible options, Kelley said.

The realignment in technology offices, announced this month, is one of several staffing changes planned in coming months by the IRS, which has 100,000 employees. Other plans, for instance, call for eliminating 192 payroll processing jobs, raising the prospect of layoffs in that line of work, the officials said.

According to plans for the technology offices, the IRS will abolish about 500 administrative positions, including some at its computing centers in Michigan, Tennessee and West Virginia. The employees in those offices run servers and networks and operate help desks for computer users within the IRS, among other jobs.

Grams said that about a third of the employees in the computing centers are in support-staff and management positions. "You simply can't run a business with that much of your resources not on the front line," he said.

The second component of the realignment is a carryover from the 1998 IRS reorganization mandated by Congress. As part of the reorganization, the IRS abolished district offices and consolidated tax work in four major divisions. In some locations, the IRS ended up with employees in technology offices where the workload declined.

Initially, about 1,100 employees were in offices with work-staffing imbalances. About half have been placed in jobs elsewhere at the IRS.

But about 250 remain and face the prospect of losing their jobs, officials said. The number at risk of layoffs will be determined by how many sign up for buyouts, early retirement or volunteer for transfers, the officials said.

IRS hopes to wrap up the realignment in technology offices by Sept. 30, 2005, the officials said.

Beverly O. Babers, head of the IRS human capital office, said the agency would work with NTEU to "try to mitigate the impact on employees as best we can."

In January, the agency announced plans to cut 2,200 jobs at its tax return processing center in Memphis and to consolidate back-office operations, such as tax collection and lien processing, from 92 locations to four, affecting about 1,500 employees.

The IRS also is seeking funds to beef up its enforcement and compliance staff in fiscal 2005. If the funding request is approved by Congress, the IRS plans to hire and train 5,000 new employees in tax collection, criminal investigation and other programs.

-- Stephen Barr