Tuesday, while millions of Americans were busy finalizing their tax returns, the President named a former IRS criminal investigator as the tax agency’s new leader. Gary Shapley, a former IRS special agent who gained prominence by publicly criticizing the pace of the Justice Department’s investigation of Hunter Biden, will be the fourth individual to lead the Internal Revenue Service since January. The last nominated and confirmed IRS Commissioner, Danny Werfel, resigned his post on Inauguration Day. Werfel was succeeded by two longtime IRS employees who each served brief stints as acting IRS commissioners, Douglas O’Donnell and Melanie Krause. Krause recently announced her departure from the agency after the Treasury Department and the Department of Homeland Security signed an agreement to share tax data in order to assist in the administration’s immigration crackdown. Shapley joined the IRS Criminal Investigation Division in 2009 and eventually rose to the level of Supervisory Special Agent.
The President previously nominated Billy Long, a former member of Congress from Missouri, to serve as permanent IRS Commissioner. Long is awaiting a Senate confirmation hearing while Democrats have expressed concerns about his prior work promoting the troubled pandemic-era Employee Retention Tax Credit and tribal tax credits.
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