Trump's IRS chief reorganizes tax agency days before filing season

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Trump’s IRS chief reorganizes tax agency days before filing season


Frank Bisignano, who leads both the IRS and Social Security Administration, said the tax agency must more aggressively try new technology.

January 20, 2026 at 1:37 p.m. EST Yesterday at 1:37 p.m. EST
3 min.

IRS leader Frank Bisignano with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office in August. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

By Jacob Bogage

The Internal Revenue Service will reorganize its senior ranks days before this year’s tax filing season opens and try to use technology to become more efficient, the Trump administration’s IRS leader Frank Bisignano told The Washington Post on Tuesday.

Administration officials named Bisignano the IRS’s chief executive, a role that does not formally exist in the agency’s governing structure, in October. He also serves as commissioner of the Social Security Administration, which means he manages more than 120,000 employees responsible for collecting roughly $5 trillion in annual revenue and disbursing close to $1.5 trillion in benefits.

Before Bisignano arrived at the IRS, the agency went through six leaders — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent still retains the title of acting IRS commissioner — and saw more than 25,000 employees leave through layoffs, buyouts and retirements. The agency had seen an influx of $80 billion from the Biden administration’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Congress has since revoked more than half of those funds.

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correction
A previous version of this article misstated Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's title within the IRS. He is the acting commissioner, not the interim commissioner.

By Jacob Bogage
Jacob Bogage covers the Trump administration's economic policy for The Washington Post, where he's worked since 2015. Contact him securely on Signal: jacobbogage.87. follow on X@jacobbogage

[CousinIT]

1. If you're due a refund, expect it to be very late, incorrect, or

lost. Pfft.

[AZJonnie]

2. Assuming new tech will deliver legit cost savings, I don't have any major objections to the IRS doing so

The less of my money that's blown in the process of taking my money, the better in my book.

HOWEVER, any kind of major tech changes takes a lot of planning, time and effort. Trying to switch over to 'new tech' in freaking JANUARY is a ridiculous thing for the IRS to do. Add a ton of org/management changes to that equation (esp. with how incompetent everyone Trump has put into power are, and the fucked motivations for everything they do) and you're looking at a massive clusterfuck waiting to happen.