The IRS has had six leaders in 2025. What that means for taxpayers.

USA Today

a day ago

Turnover at the top of IRS means fewer IRS agents, fewer audits and questions about implementing the new tax law
The IRS is on its seventh commissioner of the year, has lost one-quarter of its staff and is faced with implementing a raft of new regulations. Whether and how this turmoil could affect Americans remains to be seen.
But the first impacts are likely to be lower tax collections and a harder time getting answers to tax-related questions, according to a former commissioner and a policy analyst.
'You can be fairly confident of the direction of the impact, that having this level of instability is not good for IRS' core functions and for taxpayer service," said Alex Muresianu, Senior Policy Analyst at the Tax Foundation, a tax policy think tank. 'This level of instability coinciding with the implementation of a new set of tax laws ‒ that is a dangerous mix."
The IRS got its seventh leader of the year Aug. 8 when President Donald Trump tapped Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as its temporary head, after removing Commissioner Billy Long.
Trump ousted Long after 53 days on the job, giving him the shortest tenure of any Senate-approved IRS Commissioner.
The IRS media office referred USA TODAY to the Treasury Department, which did not return a request for comment Aug. 12.
Long, who said he will be nominated as ambassador to Iceland, was the fifth person picked by Trump to lead the agency since regaining the Oval office in 2025, but the only one approved by the Senate. Biden's IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel resigned his five-year position three years early in January, rather than be fired by Trump.
New priorities with each new leader
Each IRS commissioner sets priorities, moves resources and staff around and problem solves differently, Werfel told USA TODAY.
Constant flux over the last 8 months has likely made it difficult for staff to function, he said.
The IRS Commissioner's job is to make sure the agency runs well. Werfel compared it to keeping trains on time.
"Every time you have a new leader these rules and processes can change," he said. "It just sows confusion."
CNN and The Washington Post reported that Long was fired after the IRS clashed with the White House over using tax data to help locate suspected undocumented immigrants. Long, a former Republican Congressman and auctioneer, previously had to walk back plans to start tax season later and eliminate the IRS' free tax filing program.
Fewer agents to process returns and answer taxpayer questions
The Biden administration added nearly $80 billion in new IRS funding, largely to collect unpaid taxes from the wealthy. That money brought the agency to one of its highest staffing levels just before Trump took office. The new administration almost immediately began mass layoffs and offered early retirements for federal employees, in an effort to downsize the government.
A quarter of the IRS staff had left the agency as of mid- July, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
Among the hardest hit positions are people responsible for reviewing and processing federal tax returns, and agents, who conduct individual and business audits. Other fired workers were involved in modernizing IRS technology or helping taxpayers by telephone.
Werfel said the staffing cuts will impact customer service unless those people's jobs have been replaced by technology, and he said there is no indication they have been.
Contact with the IRS is stressful for most taxpayers, Werfel said. Fewer employees means fewer people answering phones and responding to requests for help, fewer available inperson appointments and longer waits for audit results, he said.
"The higher functioning IRS you have, the less stressful this is," he said. "If you're going to engage that bureacracy, you want it to at least work."
Fewer audits means less revenue
Conducting fewer audits means the country is collecting less revenue, which Werfel said should bother Americans worried about the national debt.
"We should want our country to be fiscally responsible," he said. "The more money that we leave on the table that is actually owed to the country, the more that we have to put on the credit card at a high interest rate."
For every dollar spent auditing America's highest earners, for example, the IRS reaps more than $4 in recovered tax dollars, research shows.
Werfel said there is an estimated $700 billion in taxes that are owed each year but not paid, an amount he said could climb if the risk of an audit drops and there is less pressure to pay.
"It creates an incentive for more people to break the rules and that means less revenue," he said.
Implementing the GOP tax law
The IRS and Treasury Department are rushing to stand up Republicans' new tax law.
Lawmakers left it up to the agencies to fill in the details of the policy changes, many of which take effect this tax year, including sorting out specifics of how new breaks for overtime pay, tips and other provisions will work.
Muresianu, the tax analyst, said taxpayers often need more clarification from the IRS when new tax laws take effect, and the call volume will likely be higher next year.
'If you have instability at the IRS, management problems at the IRS, and their ability to provide service declines, that is particularly bad if it's coming at a time where there a lot of people looking for clarity,' he said.