After the Trump administration demanded and received sensitive taxpayer information at the IRS as part of the White House’s anti-immigrant agenda, the acting commissioner of the agency, Melanie Krause, resigned after just two months on the job. It was an understandable response to an unprecedented and legally dubious tactic.
Krause was not, however, the only one who chose to exit the tax agency. In fact, she was the third IRS chief to resign so far this year. What’s more, The New York Times and Politico published separate reports, noting that the agency’s chief financial, privacy and risk officers have also decided to quit, as has the IRS’ chief of staff. (Those reports have not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News.)
The list is still growing. Reuters reported:
The chief information officer at the Internal Revenue Service said he would resign, according to an email sent to staff and seen by Reuters on Monday, the latest in a string of high-profile departures at the tax-collecting agency in the run-up to the April 15 filing deadline for most U.S. taxpayers. CIO Rajiv Uppal, whose job was to oversee the development and improvement of the IRS’ computer and IT systems, said his resignation would be effective late this month.
What’s more, it’s not just those in leadership positions. The New York Times also reported: “About 22,000 employees at the Internal Revenue Service have signed up for the Trump administration’s latest resignation offer, according to four people familiar with the matter, an exodus that could weaken the agency’s ability to collect taxes.”
If this report is accurate, it’s a piece of an increasingly ugly puzzle. These apparent departures, coupled with the IRS officials who’ve already stepped down and the probationary employees ousted by Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative, suggest that the tax agency will lose nearly a third of its workforce in 2025.
Complicating matters further, the problems are not limited to personnel matters. As we’ve discussed, the IRS is also dealing with DOGE-driven disruptions, which are poised to be extraordinarily expensive while simultaneously abandoning a much-needed IRS modernization initiative and taking steps to politicize the agency’s criminal division.
The result is a destabilized tax agency — which happens to be necessary for collecting the money needed to run the United States government. (Yes, I realize that Donald Trump envisions a possible model in which tax revenue is replaced by tariff revenue, but this continues to be bananas.) As for the latest vacancy atop the IRS, the president this week tapped Gary Shapley to serve as the latest acting IRS commissioner — not because he was the most qualified, but because Shapley is a political ally who raised concerns about Hunter Biden’s taxes. Shapley shouldn’t get too comfortable, however, since the president has nominated former Republican Rep. Billy Long to lead the tax agency — despite the former Missouri congressman’s highly controversial record, which includes championing legislation to abolish the agency that Trump now wants him to lead. The future of the IRS is in doubt in ways Americans have never seen before.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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