IRS Chief to Resign Over Sharing of Migrants' Tax Data

The IRS is about to get its fourth leader since President Trump's inauguration less than three months ago. Acting IRS commissioner Melanie Krause plans to resign as part of the Trump administration's deferred resignation program after she was slighted by officials who secured a deal to allow immigration authorities to access the private taxpayer information, including addresses, of undocumented immigrants facing deportation, per the Washington Post. Treasury officials bypassed the input of Krause and other IRS executives in securing the data-sharing deal signed Monday, which IRS lawyers advised likely violates privacy law, per the Post.

As one IRS source tells CNN, "we are basically breaking their trust and the law and taking their information and using it to find them and deport them." Krause only learned of the deal after it was released to Fox News, according to the Post's sources. The people said disagreements about the direction of the agency factored into Krause's decision, which follows the exits of other IRS leaders, including the chief privacy officer, per CNN. Krause feels she's unable to effectively push back on cuts ordered by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and that "some of the decisions that are being made now are things the IRS can never recover from," says a Post source.

Krause served as chief operations officer at the IRS before taking over for Doug O'Donnell on Feb. 28. O'Donnell had served as IRS commissioner since January but retired "rather than clash with DOGE and immigration enforcement officials," the Post reports. The previous commissioner, Biden-appointed Danny Werfel, resigned on Trump's inauguration day though he had years left in his term. Losing three agency leaders in three months is "unprecedented," one source tells the Post. "I don't think we've seen anything like this at IRS." Trump has nominated a loyalist, former Rep. Billy Long, to be the next commissioner, though he still awaits a Senate confirmation hearing. (More Internal Revenue Service stories.)