U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and Acting Commissioner of the IRS Scott Bessent announced that Commissioner of the Social Security Administration Frank Bisignano will serve as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the IRS.
If you’re reading this and doing a double take, you didn’t misread it, and I didn’t report it incorrectly. According to the Treasury, this is a “newly created position.” As part of his new CEO duties, Bisignano will report directly to Bessent, managing the organization and overseeing all day-to-day IRS operations while also continuing to serve in his role as Commissioner of the Social Security Administration.
If that sounds a lot like the work of the IRS Commissioner, you’re not wrong. According to the IRS’s own manual, “The IRS Commissioner is tasked with establishing and interpreting policies related to tax administration, as well as developing strategic issues, goals, and objectives for the management and operation of the IRS. This role includes the overall planning, directing, controlling, and evaluation of IRS policies, programs, and performance.”
About Frank J. Bisignano
Bisignano currently serves as the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration. Before moving over to the SSA, Bisignano served as the CEO of First Data and the president and CEO of Fiserv, a payments and fintech company.
Questions about the future of SSA marked his March Senate confirmation hearing. Before Bisignano came on board, the agency’s website had crashed four times in 10 days this month due to server overload. Staffing at the agency is at a 50-year low despite a heavier workload. The numbers were expected to drop even more, as SSA had set a staffing target of 50,000, down from approximately 57,000 employees at the start of the year (recent official headcount numbers have not been made public).
Bisignano was confirmed in a 53–47 party-line vote on May 6, 2025, and was sworn as the Social Security Commissioner the next day.
Importantly, because the IRS CEO role is newly created, it does not require Senate confirmation.
Reactions To The News
The announcement was made quietly via a press release. There were not many immediate reactions to the news, as much of Congress has left the Hill—the House remains out of session for the third consecutive week. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has advised members that they’ll be notified if they need to return to Washington, but he has signaled that he won’t act until the Senate has reached a compromise.
In the press release, Bessent championed the move. “Frank is a businessman with an exceptional track record of driving growth and efficiency in the private and now public sector,” Bessent said in the statement. “Under his leadership at the SSA, he has already made important and substantial progress, and we are pleased that he will bring this expertise to the IRS as we sharpen our focus on collections, privacy, and customer service in order to deliver better outcomes for hardworking Americans.”
Not everyone is convinced. For example, Bisignano has reported improved customer service at the SSA, including phone wait times. However, critics argue that some of those statistics are misleading, noting, for example, that some of the progress occurred before his tenure—average call wait times on the agency’s phones fell to under 13 minutes by the end of 2024, with the disability claims backlog reaching a 30-year low. And some metrics have recently been revised—like the calculation of average call wait times which exclude the time that customers who use the callback feature wait, meaning that callers may still wait hours before reaching a representative—so that comparisons aren’t apples to apples.
The most recent news isn’t likely to make taxpayers feel better—there are already grumbles about a “part-time” Commissioner for Social Security beneficiaries. And with worries about the next filing season at the IRS already causing some tax professionals anxiety, what appears to be a lack of commitment to a full-time IRS Commissioner hasn’t been met with cheers. There is real concern that essentially running two of the largest agencies in government will simply result in a lack of commitment and attention to either.
Tax Law Center Deputy Director Mike Kaercher issued a statement saying, “Managing the IRS is a full-time job. Having one person run two major agencies makes it even harder for the IRS to prepare for the next filing season and implement recent changes in tax law.”
There are also privacy concerns. Earlier this year, the SSA was sued for giving the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to records, and the IRS has also been sued for agreeing to share taxpayer data with United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). (IRS data is traditionally subject to strict privacy laws.) “Putting the same person in charge of both the IRS and SSA creates a conflict of interest when SSA wants access to legally protected taxpayer data,” wrote Kaercher.
Why Is There No IRS Commissioner?
The new position is clearly intended to take some of the pressure off of Bessent as Acting IRS Commissioner—remember, there’s no confirmed IRS Commissioner at the moment. If you’re wondering how we got here, here’s a recap.
President Donald Trump announced Billy Long’s nomination in December of 2024, even though Danny Werfel was then serving a term as IRS Commissioner that would normally have run until late in 2027. Long was sworn in on June 16, 2025. Less than two months after he was sworn in, Long was out as IRS Commissioner.
After the announcement about Long’s nomination—but before Long’s swearing in—Werfel announced his resignation, effective January 20, 2025. Since Long had not yet been confirmed at that time, Werfel was replaced by Doug O’Donnell, who served as Acting Commissioner following Werfel’s departure. O’Donnell left his position on February 28, 2025, and was replaced by then IRS Chief Operating Officer Melanie Krause. Krause announced her departure in April 2025, following the tax agency’s agreement to share immigrant tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Gary Shapley served as Acting Commissioner for just two days after Krause’s departure before being replaced by Michael Faulkender on April 18, 2025—he was in that position until Long stepped in.
Counting the procession of acting IRS heads, Long was the sixth person to run the IRS since the beginning of the year. Long was replaced by Scott Bessent, who is now serving as Acting Commissioner while also serving as Secretary of the Treasury.