IRS Gets Its 7th Leader Since January

Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano was named to the newly created position of CEO of the IRS on Monday, making him the latest member of the Trump administration to be put in charge of multiple federal agencies. As chief executive of the Internal Revenue Service, Bisignano will report to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who currently serves as acting commissioner of the IRS, the Treasury Department says. It is unclear whether Bisignano's newly created role at the IRS will require Senate confirmation.

• The Treasury Department said in a statement that Bisignano will be responsible for overseeing all day-to-day IRS operations while continuing to serve in his role as commissioner of the Social Security Administration, the AP reports.

• Bessent said in a statement that the IRS and SSA "share many of the same technological and customer service goals. This makes Mr. Bisignano a natural choice for this role."
• Bisignano is the seventh leader of the IRS since the start of Trump's second term, the Washington Post reports. Bessent was named acting commissioner in August after Trump removed former US Rep. Billy Long from the role less than two months after his confirmation and made him ambassador to Iceland. The four acting commissioners before Long included Melanie Krause, who resigned over a deal to share private taxpayer data with immigration authorities, and Gary Shapley, Elon Musk's preferred candidate, who lasted just three days amid tensions between Bessent and Musk.

• Mike Kaercher, deputy director of the Tax Law Center at the New York University School of Law, points to a possible conflict of interest in Bisignano holding leadership roles at SSA and the IRS. "Putting the same person in charge of both the IRS and SSA creates a conflict of interest when SSA wants access to legally protected taxpayer data," Kaercher said.
• Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group for SSA recipients and future retirees, said Bisignano's "divided attention will create a bottleneck that makes the inevitable problems that arise even harder to correct. Never in Social Security's 90-year history has a commissioner held a second job. Bisiginano's new role will leave a leadership vacuum at the top of the agency, especially since the Republican Senate hasn't even confirmed a deputy commissioner."
• With two day jobs, Bisignano joins a number of other Trump administration officials to wear multiple hats, including Bessent, Marco Rubio, Sean Duffy, Jamieson Greer, and Russell Vought.