Bloomberg, Acting or Vacant: The New Status Quo for Leadership Roles at IRS:
Top jobs at the IRS in the Trump administration generally have two forms in 2025: vacant or acting.
Roughly 30 jobs make up the top brass organizational chart at the agency. Of those, nine are vacant and 11 are filled by employees in an acting capacity—chief among them the IRS commissioner, now on its seventh leader with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He took over after President Donald Trump ousted his own pick for the top job, Billy Long, last week.
One acting commissioner, Gary Shapley, lasted less than a week after a dispute among administration officials.
The unprecedented turnover obscures who’s in charge at the agency and raises worries among taxpayers and practitioners, some of whom wonder whether the IRS will be able to get anything done at all as the next tax season approaches.
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