IRS To Halt Nonessential Travel Over Coronavirus, Union Says

Amid the worldwide outbreak of COVID-19, also known as coronavirus, the Internal Revenue Service will stop nonessential travel for its employees for 30 days unless it is "mission-critical," Tony Reardon, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said Monday.

Reardon told Law360 in a statement that he met with IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig to discuss what steps the agency is taking to protect employee health and safety during the coronavirus outbreak and how the union can work with the IRS to protect and inform workers. Reardon said the union supports the travel shutdown. 

"To the extent this impacts employee training programs, we urged IRS to explore alternatives such as web-based training programs," Reardon said. "We continue to urge the agency to broaden its telework program."

The IRS did not respond to requests for comment.

Reardon said the IRS shouldn't stop with expanding telework, though. He noted that the agency's workforce is at its peak level now with the addition of seasonal employees who join during filing season. Those jobs are inherently ineligible for telework, he said, and particular attention needs to be paid to workers in those roles, "especially when it comes to granting their leave requests." 

"Many of these workplaces currently have thousands of employees on site," he said, "and NTEU has requested that the IRS take sensible precautions including increased disinfecting of buildings, providing employees with access to hand and surface sanitizers to avoid spread of the virus and implementing policies that will allow for social distancing in heavy populated offices." 

The agency's travel shutdown comes as the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development will continue meetings with working groups involved with its far-reaching plan to forge an agreement on digital tax issues while allowing for parties to teleconference. The group, however, has called off a March 17 public consultation for review of public country-by-country reporting rules and most other in-person meetings, according to a message on its website.

Other responses to the virus include the Southern District of New York's banning of anyone who recently traveled to nations rocked by the virus or anyone who came into contact with the virus from entering courthouses. And a Broward County, Florida, couple who were quarantined on a Princess Cruise Lines Ltd. ship that had been sequestered off the coast of San Francisco before docking in Oakland sued the company on Monday. The suit alleges failures to take steps to prevent an outbreak on the ship after two people with symptoms left the ship during the previous sailing.

--Additional reporting by Alex M. Parker and Carolina Bolado. Editing by John Oudens.

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