Help Wanted: Top Job at IRS Open After Confirmed Chief Splits

One of the most unwanted jobs in Washington is now up for grabs—again.

President Donald Trump’s IRS commissioner, Billy Long, exited as the head role last week and is expected to be nominated as the ambassador to Iceland. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will fill the job in the interim.

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The vacancy at the top of the IRS continues the turbulence the agency has experienced since the start of the Trump administration. Now, the question of who will be nominated next—if at all—remains.

In this episode of Talking Tax, Bloomberg Tax reporter Erin Slowey discusses how the IRS got to this point and what it means for the future of the agency.

Do you have feedback on this episode of Talking Tax? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

This transcript was produced by Bloomberg Tax Automation.

TRANSCRIPT:

From Washington, I’m David Schultz, and this is Talking Tax.

We have a new leader at the IRS. Again. And no, you’re not experiencing déjà vu. Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, is now also leading the IRS in an acting capacity after former Commissioner Billy Long exited with just two months under his belt. Bessent is the seventh—seventh—person to lead the IRS in 2025, a nearly unprecedented amount of turnover at the top of the country’s tax collecting body.

Today, we’re going to talk about Long’s brief but eventful tenure at the IRS, why he was let go, and what this lack of leadership will mean for the agency and for taxpayers for the rest of this year. And to do that, I brought on Bloomberg tax reporter Erin Slowey.

Host (David Schultz): To start, I challenge her to name, in order, all seven of the people who’ve occupied the top spot at the IRS this year.

Erin Slowey: So Danny Werfel was the Biden pick. He started. And then it was Doug O’Donnell, who was the deputy commissioner. He stepped in in an acting capacity. And then after him was Melanie Krauss. She was there for a couple of weeks. And then it was Gary Shapley. And then it was Michael Faulkner, who is a confirmed person in the Treasury Department. He was there in an acting capacity. And then it was Billy Long, finally, the confirmed commissioner. And then he just left and now it’s Scott Bessent. That’s seven.

Host: Very nicely done. That’s not easy to remember. But in all seriousness, that’s a lot of people, seven in one year. What’s going on here? You and Erin Schilling wrote an article for Bloomberg Tax saying that this is the job in Washington that no one wants. Why doesn’t anyone want to be the head of the IRS?

Erin Slowey: Well, I generally think the IRS is an easy agency to hate. It’s an agency that everyone has some sort of interaction with generally. So there’s that. And then Congress also isn’t always the biggest fan of it. So whoever that person is, whenever they go on the Hill, they get grilled pretty, pretty deeply. So there’s that in a normal year.

But in a Trump administration, he really wants the IRS to be a part of his priorities. And recently, it’s been a lot about the Department of Homeland Security and helping them root out people who they think came into the country illegally. So it’s making it easier to help administer what the president wants. And then there’s things like auditing Harvard University. It’s another area where I think normally the IRS would be pretty separate from the administration and like what they’re asking for. But now the lines have been blurred a lot. And so whoever wants to be in that position, they could face potentially tough questions or tough asks to do.

So it’s a job that would be getting you a lot of heat in a normal time. But now they’re being asked to do really controversial stuff. So it’s like ratcheting up even more the pressure on whoever is leading this agency.

Host: Yes. And they’ve also shown, despite how many people they’ve gone through already, that they don’t really care about keeping someone there long term. So I think that also may not be an incentive for someone to want that job.

Well, let’s get into Billy Long specifically. Unlike the other folks who led the IRS and left, he was confirmed. He was not in an acting position. Tell me about him.

Erin Slowey: I think that when he was going through the confirmation process, a lot of people were surprised that he was nominated and was sort of an odd choice.

Host: Why was that?

Erin Slowey: Typically, the IRS says that or tries to say that they are nonpartisan. And Billy Long is someone who was on the Hill. He was a Republican congressman from Missouri. And then he also was formerly an auctioneer. So this is someone who doesn’t have a college degree coming in to potentially leave the IRS. So initially, those were things that people had problems with. Typically, someone in that job has either tax or management experience.

Host: Well, I also get the sense that people were concerned with his tax experience, you know, and his back. Can you talk a little bit about some of the sort of questionable tax breaks that he was promoting?

Erin Slowey: Yeah. So he was working with a firm that was promoting the employee retention credit, which is a real credit. But a lot of promoters had conned people into claiming the credit more than what they deserved, or maybe they didn’t deserve the credit at all. It was a really big issue for the IRS under the Biden administration trying to claw that back. So that was initially what we had heard he was involved with, which it’s a real credit.

But then there is another credit, the tribal tax credit that he was apparently involved with in some ways, which isn’t a real credit. And so it’s like, what does it mean to have a commissioner at the helm that was like, maybe involved in some gray areas of the law. So that was a lot of what he got asked about during his confirmation hearing.

Host: But despite that, he was confirmed. And then after he was confirmed, when he was officially in the role, he made some mistakes, or rather some misstatements. Can you talk a little bit about that? I get the sense that it involves when the filing season started and free file and things like that. What was going on there?

Erin Slowey: Yeah. So interestingly enough, I was there when he spoke. This was his first public speaking event, which honestly very quickly after he got confirmed. So he was speaking at the National Association of Enrolled Agents Conference that they had over the summer in Utah. And it was a sit down with their president with pre-approved questions from the Treasury Department. And talked a lot about what he wanted to do at the IRS and how much he was relying on employees.

But he also talked about how he had a conversation with an IRS employee and a leader in Atlanta and how he wanted to push a filing season from President’s Day. Filing season typically is earlier in the year. President’s Day is probably later in February. It’s typically around MLK Day.

Host: So just to clear, he was saying, I want filing season to be early. I don’t want it to start on President’s Day. But it was never starting on President’s Day. That wasn’t the plan at all.

Erin Slowey: Yeah. To my understanding, that was not the plan. It’s typically about a month earlier. And I think he just misspoke. Then on the day that he departed, he did tweet about or he did post on X about filing season is going to start on time right around MLK Day.

He also spoke about direct file, direct file being gone. I think direct file to my knowledge is like still up and running. It was something Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, had said that they were going to keep until the end of filing season, which to me makes sense, which would be October 15th for people who filed extensions. So that was another kind of either slip up or it was that intentional. I don’t know. But those were two kind of big things that happened within the last two weeks before he left.

Host: Well, the IRS does not have a permanent leader. Scott Bessent is leading it in an acting capacity. What are some of the things that an acting IRS commissioner can’t do? You and Aaron Schilling wrote about how for the IRS, ramping up for filing season starts now. Is this going to affect the IRS and affect taxpayers in a really tangible way?

Erin Slowey: It’s probably too soon to tell in most cases. The IRS, with as many people as it does have, it probably runs a little bit on itself, too. But some of the major decisions acting people are generally not super eager to make. So we may see the IRS just kind of putting itself through the motion of what would normally be a filing season. So we may not see anything super crazy in terms of decisions from the agency. That would be my expectations. Just leaders don’t want to put their neck out on the line or they don’t want to make a decision that maybe someone who’s confirmed comes in and is like, that’s not what I would have done. So that’s what I would expect.

Obviously, having someone in the position that you can look towards the future and plan, I think is generally really helpful for anyone in any job. So I think it’s too soon to tell, but definitely how filing season goes and the implementation of the tax bill are the two biggest things.

Host: Right. That’s what I was going to say, is that it’s one thing to have the IRS kind of run on autopilot and get ready for filing season. But that’s not all the IRS needs to do. There have also been some really significant changes in tax law with the passage of the one big, beautiful bill. These are things that have to happen now, in some cases before the next filing season. Can they do that without a leader?

Erin Slowey: I think, again, too soon to tell. But also in terms of implementing that law, the chief counsel’s office in the IRS is really pivotal in that, in terms of guidance, which it also has an acting person in that position. And that’s now Ken Keyes. They’ve also gone through several people at this point, but Ken Keyes is also someone, he’s a treasury assistant secretary in treasury for tax policy. So another treasury person is also there in an acting capacity. So a couple of people wearing two hats.

Host: Finally, though, you mentioned people wearing two hats. One of those is, of course, Scott Bessent, who is the acting IRS chief and the treasury secretary. I have to imagine that won’t last too long, that he’ll be replaced by someone else who will be acting and will be getting our eighth commissioner of the year. Can we expect to see another nominee, someone to be nominated to this position permanently? What do you think is going to happen there? Or will we just have an acting commissioner of the IRS through the rest of the Trump term?

Erin Slowey: I think the White House is probably putting out some feelers about, like we talked about in the beginning, like who would even want this job? That person would come in and just fill out the Biden person’s term. So we’re full left early. So that person would only be in there for about two years, which would be until 2027. So not even finish out the full Trump term unless they got re-nominated again. So this person’s coming in knowing they don’t have the full five years to potentially do it. But again, who wants that job? I don’t know.

By the time it gets through the confirmation process, like really long, it took six months. Obviously, there were a lot of nominations going on in the beginning of the year. I could also just see them keeping Scott Bessent as like an acting person.

Host: Oh, really?

Erin Slowey: Yeah, until the end. Because like we said, it’s only two years potentially. And like how involved he is on the day to day, I feel like probably not that much. I think he has a lot of other things going on. So again, like maybe the IRS generally operates by itself and then they have the bigger decisions are made in Treasury. So I think they’re probably putting out feelers like who can we get confirmed and if anyone quickly, but if not, maybe Bessent stays in that job.

Host: Right. Because, you know, whenever the White House nominates anyone for any post, it kind of creates a lot of work for the Senate, which has to sort of review them and hold hearings and, you know, hold a vote. I wonder if the Senate even is, you know, wanting to do that with the IRS commissioner, given how it, you know, went through the confirmation process was long and now he’s already gone after two months.

Erin Slowey: Yeah, I’m not sure exactly what the appetite will be to like, again, like you’re saying, go through the process and then potentially have them taken out again. So we’ll see when they come back from their August recess, how they’re how they’re feeling.

Host: Yeah. All right. Well, that was Erin Slowey talking about the Magnificent Seven who have led the IRS this year. We’ll see if there’s eight. Who knows? Erin, thank you so much.

Erin Slowey: Thanks for having me.

Host: And that’s it for today’s podcast. You can find up-to-the-minute news and the latest tax and accounting developments at our website, news.bloombergtax.com. That website once again is news.bloombergtax.com.

Today’s episode was produced by myself, David Schultz, and our editors were Meg Shreve, Kim Dixon, and Martha Mueller-Neff. From Washington, I’m David Schultz. Thanks for listening.

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Corrects misspellings of Bessent’s name throughout automated transcript.