By FATIMA HUSSEIN
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former U.S. Rep. Billy Lengthy of Missouri was confirmed on Thursday to steer the Inner Income Service, giving the beleaguered company he as soon as sought to abolish a everlasting commissioner after months of appearing leaders and big staffing cuts which have threatened to derail subsequent yr’s tax submitting season.
The Senate confirmed Lengthy on a 53-44 vote regardless of Democrats’ considerations concerning the Republican’s previous work for a agency that pitched a fraud-ridden coronavirus pandemic-era tax break and about marketing campaign contributions he acquired after President Donald Trump nominated him to function IRS commissioner.
Whereas in Congress, the place he served from 2011 to 2023, Lengthy sponsored laws to eliminate the IRS, the company he’s now tasked with main. A former auctioneer, Lengthy has no background in tax administration.
Lengthy will take over an IRS present process large change, together with layoffs and voluntary retirements of tens of hundreds of employees and accusations that then-Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity mishandled delicate taxpayer information. Unions and advocacy organizations have sued to dam DOGE’s entry to the data.
The IRS was one of many highest-profile businesses nonetheless with no Senate-confirmed chief. Earlier than Lengthy’s affirmation, the IRS shuffled by way of 4 appearing leaders, together with one who resigned over a deal between the IRS and the Division of Homeland Safety to share immigrants’ tax information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and one other whose appointment led to a combat between Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
After leaving Congress to mount an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate, Lengthy labored with a agency that distributed the pandemic-era worker retention tax credit score. That tax credit score program was ultimately shut down after then-IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel decided that it was fraudulent.
Democrats known as for a prison investigation into Lengthy’s connections to different alleged tax credit score loopholes. The lawmakers allege that corporations related to Lengthy duped traders into spending hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to buy faux tax credit.
Lengthy appeared earlier than the Senate Finance Committee final month and denied any wrongdoing associated to his involvement within the tax credit score scheme.
Forward of the affirmation vote, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the rating member of the Senate Finance Committee, despatched a letter to White Home chief of employees Susie Wiles blasting the requisite FBI background examine performed on Lengthy as a political appointee as insufficient.
Democratic lawmakers have additionally written to Lengthy and his related corporations detailing considerations with what they name unusually timed contributions made to Lengthy’s defunct 2022 Senate marketing campaign committee shortly after Trump nominated him.
The IRS faces an unsure future beneath Lengthy. Tax consultants have voiced considerations that the 2026 submitting season could possibly be hampered by the departure of so many tax assortment employees. In April, The Related Press reported that the IRS deliberate to chop as many as 20,000 staffers — as much as 25% of the workforce. An IRS consultant on Thursday confirmed the IRS had shed about that many employees however mentioned the cuts amounted to roughly the identical variety of IRS jobs added beneath the Biden administration.
The destiny of the Direct File program, the free digital tax return submitting system developed throughout President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, can be unclear. Republican lawmakers and industrial tax preparation firms had complained it was a waste of taxpayer cash as a result of free submitting applications exist already, though they’re exhausting to make use of. Lengthy mentioned throughout his affirmation listening to that it might be one of many first applications that come up for dialogue if he have been confirmed.
Lengthy shouldn’t be the one Trump appointee to assist dismantling an company he was assigned to handle.
Linda McMahon, the present training secretary, has repeatedly mentioned she is attempting to place herself out of a job by closing the federal division and transferring its work to the states. Rick Perry, Trump’s vitality secretary throughout his first time period, known as for abolishing the Power Division throughout his bid for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.
