US Treasury’s Bessent ousts IRS acting chief, names deputy to temporary role

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By Kanishka Singh, David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed on Friday that Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender has been appointed acting Internal Revenue Service commissioner, replacing longtime IRS career official Gary Shapley in the temporary role.

Bessent said in a posting on X that “trust must be brought back to the IRS, and I am fully confident that @TreasuryDepSec Michael Faulkender is the right man for the moment.”

Shapley, who testified as a whistleblower before Congress about the agency’s investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes, held the job for less than three days. The IRS special agent was expected to step down once President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the IRS, former U.S. Representative Billy Long of Missouri, was confirmed by the Senate.

The New York Times, which first reported the decision, quoted unnamed sources familiar with the matter as saying that Bessent had requested the change because Shapley had been appointed to the post on Tuesday at the behest of billionaire Elon Musk without his knowledge or consent.

Bessent said in the post that Shapley would stay at the IRS and continue a year-long reform investigation along with Joseph Ziegler, another IRS agent who alleged political interference in the Hunter Biden probe.

“Gary Shapley’s passion and thoughtfulness for approaching ways by which to create durable and lasting reforms at the IRS is essential to our work, and he remains among my most important senior advisors at the U.S. Treasury as we work together to rethink and reform the IRS,” Bessent said.

According to the Times report, Musk’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency pushed the appointment through White House channels, but Bessent was not consulted. Bessent later received Trump’s approval to unwind the Shapley appointment.

DOGE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Treasury spokesperson declined to comment on the Times report, but said that Faulkender’s experience at Treasury during Trump’s first term leading early COVID-19 relief programs “proves well his ability to take temporary leadership of high-level, mission critical government programs.” The Treasury spokesperson declined to comment on whether the IRS would take steps to revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status after Trump said the Ivy League institution was abusing that status.

The spokesperson said Faulkender would work toward changes to combat “weaponization and politicization” of the IRS until Congress confirms Long as the agency’s commissioner.

Trump had picked Shapley following the departure of the previous interim head, Melanie Krause, who quit the tax-collecting agency after it struck a deal to share data with federal agents on migrants living illegally in the United States.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and David Lawder in Washington; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Matthew Lewis)