Less than 1% of the more than 7,000 probationary workers fired from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service earlier this year on performance grounds were actually documented underachievers, according to a new report from an internal watchdog that said the agency failed to follow its own procedures for the mass termination.

Under direction from the Office of Personnel Management and the Treasury Department, the IRS issued termination notices to 7,315 probationary employees in February and March as part of the Elon Musk-led government “efficiency” program pushed by President Donald Trump.

Officials at the IRS were reportedly forbidden from changing the wording of the termination letters, which were drafted by OPM and Treasury and cited “performance reasons and current mission needs” as the justification for employees’ dismissal.

However, an August report by agency watchdog the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that just 43 of the terminated employees had performance issues that had been documented. More than 3,500 of the probationary workers who were dismissed were rated as “fully successful” or better, while the remainder had no performance rating or record.

“Prior to the termination notices being sent, senior IRS officials refused to sign the notices and raised concerns that many of these employees did not have documented performance issues,” the TIGTA report said. “Despite these concerns, the IRS’s Human Capital Office sent the notices.”

Reached for comment, the TIGTA said it had nothing further to share beyond what was included in the report. A spokesperson for the IRS also declined to comment on the report.

‘Never before received a directive such as this’

After receiving the OPM directive, the IRS identified nearly 16,900 workers who were still in their probationary period — the final employment tryout in the civil service — in its review. It then excluded employees who were seen as vital for carrying out workplace tasks during filing season, along with employees who had appeal rights, were involved in law enforcement activities or had military spouses, before sending out the termination notices.

The TIGTA report also flagged that the IRS misclassified more than 100 of these workers, who were “erroneously sent” termination notices even though their work was ultimately deemed to be “mission critical.” The bulk of those mistakenly terminated employees were tax law specialists and revenue agents working for the IRS.

Following a court challenge, the terminated probationary employees were to be brought back to work in May, but less than half of the fired workers were ultimately reinstated. The rest resigned, took a deferred resignation that would allow them to be paid through the end of September, or were placed on administrative leave.

After the terminations, Traci DiMartini, the human capital officer for the IRS said in testimony for a lawsuit related to firings that the directive to terminate probationary employees en masse was unprecedented.

“In all my decades of human resource management for the federal government, I had never before received a directive such as this one,” she said in a sworn statement in March. “Because the basis for any probationary employee termination is a highly individualized determination, terminating probationary employees on a large scale has never been done, to my knowledge.”

DiMartini refused to sign the termination notices, and was ultimately placed on administrative leave roughly a month after the OPM instructed agencies to begin reducing their headcounts.

ICIJ has previously reported on terminations at the IRS. In March, ICIJ found that the IRS unit responsible for auditing billionaires had been reduced by 38% within the first couple months of the new administration.

The legal challenges over the rapid-fire reductions in force across the federal government have put a hold on future terminations at the agency before the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the plans to go forward in July.

“At the time we published this report, it is unclear whether any probationary employees will remain reinstated or be terminated,” the TIGTA wrote.