Sound Familiar?

      From Government Executive:

An IRS watchdog is taking a closer look at the agency’s temporary reassignment of mid-career employees to frontline entry-level jobs many of them had no prior experience doing.  … 

The IRS cut tens of thousands of jobs last year — more than a quarter of its workforce — and fell short of its hiring goals for this year’s filing season.  

IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank Bisignano said the IRS carried out a successful filing season this year, despite losing more than 25,000 employees. He told the House Ways and Means Committee in March that “I feel good about the number of employees I have right now.”  … 

Employees placed on these involuntary details are doing jobs several pay grades below the work they were hired to perform, but continue to receive their regular paychecks. In practice, the IRS is paying them double or triple what a normal customer service representative or tax examiner would make.  … 

Several impacted IRS employees told Government Executive that the initial details were involuntary, they have received insufficient training and support for this work, and they have no clear idea what work is available to them at the IRS if they leave these details. 

According to two IRS employees currently on details, the agency is looking for volunteers to remain in taxpayer services for a third 120-day tour of duty. Employees who complete a third stint would be away from their day jobs for nearly a year. But these employees say the agency is giving them few alternatives. Both previously worked in IT roles at the agency, and have been told they cannot return to their former jobs.  … 

In May, IRS Chief Human Capital Officer Alex Kweskin acknowledged that some employees on temporary details were unhappy with their current arrangements, and encouraged them to apply for other roles within the agency. Employees, however, said they have applied for other 2210-classified IT positions at the IRS, only for those job announcements to be cancelled days later.    …

Two Agencies With A Similar Problem

      From an article in the New York Times:

… The Trump administration has held up the publication of an annual Internal Revenue Service estimate of unpaid taxes, a delay that could mask the fiscal cost of the steep decline in the agency’s ability to audit the rich. 

The I.R.S. has long published an estimate of the tax gap, the amount of tax owed under existing law that goes uncollected each year.  … 

The shift comes after the Trump administration pushed out roughly a quarter of the I.R.S. work force and cut the agency’s budget, weakening the government’s ability to conduct time-intensive audits.  … 

The absence of an updated tax gap estimate is part of a pattern across the Trump administration, which has either stopped collecting or sought to change the measurement of federal data that scientists and other researchers have long relied on for a rigorous, unvarnished understanding of the country.  … 

An I.R.S. spokesman said the agency was updating the methodologies used to calculate the tax gap and would release the figure when it was ready. Mr. Bisignano, in a statement, said revenue from tax enforcement was increasing this year and did not depend on the number of auditors. … 

“Without a metric of the tax gap that is telling us in real time about trends in compliance and how they’re changing, I worry that it’s hard for policymakers to see the full swath of the damage that’s been done by the gutting of the agency,” said Natasha Sarin, a Treasury official during the Biden administration who has written extensively about the tax gap. “And, in fact, I worry that’s the point.” …  

In appearances before Congress in the spring, Mr. Bisignano, the first chief executive officer of the I.R.S., suggested that he was skeptical of the methodology behind the tax gap, saying that he wanted to focus on the subset of unpaid taxes that the I.R.S. could realistically collect. …

     Sound familiar? Cut staff to the point an agency cannot fulfill its core responsibilities, refuse to release statistics showing how bad things have gotten and try to come up with your own tortured statistics making it look as if things aren’t as bad as they really are. Bisignano is at the helm of two agencies doing this but it sounds like the problem is government wide.

I Wonder What The Internal Memos Say At Social Security

      From NOTUS:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called any concerns over the cuts to IRS staffing “a complete fallacy” in a testimony to Congress earlier this month.

Frank Bisignano, the IRS CEO, told lawmakers that the “pundits out there saying IRS is going to fail” as a result of sweeping staffing cuts are wrong. …

Internally, however, the agency is projecting an entirely different picture. While the Trump administration publicly stated that the IRS has suffered no ill effects from the staffing cuts, the agency was sounding the alarm that it would be unable to handle tax season, requesting special permission to hire thousands of employees on an expedited basis.

The IRS ultimately requested, and received, special authority to hire 8,000 employees on an expedited basis, according to an internal memorandum obtained by NOTUS.

The agency has “seen massive cuts to its staff in 2025 through workforce reduction initiatives” and “ongoing staffing shortages put the 2026 Filing Season at risk,” Alex Kweskin, the agency’s top human-resources official, said in the late-February memo to the Treasury Department that was later passed on to the Office of Personnel Management. …

Bisignano Accused Of Sycophancy

     From the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) concerning Commissioner Bisignano’s IRS role in facilitating the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund:

… Bisignano’s chief talent is sycophancy and raising no questions about anything,” a former veteran Social Security Administration (SSA) employee told us. The same former SSA employee added that no career professional “would remain silent” in the face of an outrage like the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” …

The veteran SSA employee who spoke to us described the Social Security Administration as “not even recognizable” under Bisignano’s reign, pointing to what he sees as a breakdown in long-standing norms, internal safeguards, and respect for career expertise. Others warn that the same leadership style could enable or obscure future controversies, including ongoing concerns surrounding DOGE data breaches. …

     Ordinarily a group like NCPSSM wants to maintain cordial relations with Commissioners. This NCPSSM post is a sign of just how badly the well has been poisoned. 

     Bisignano may think that talk of him being prosecuted over the “anti-weaponization” fund is over the top. It isn’t. Unless the fund is quashed or Bisignano is pardoned, it will happen. Even in these times, this is far into the criminal realm.

Bisignano Really Needs A Pardon Before Trump Leaves Office

      From the New York Times:

… Frank Bisignano, who is working in the newly created role of chief executive of the I.R.S., signed the agreement with the Justice Department to create the [$1.8 billion dollar slush] fund [controlled by Donald Trump which may be used to pay taxpayer dollars to those convicted of assaulting law enforcement officers on the President’s behalf]. Mr. Bisignano was not confirmed by the Senate to that I.R.S. job, and he is splitting his duties there with his job as the commissioner of the Social Security Administration.

     This is aiding and abetting embezzlement. 

Bisignano To Testify At Congressional Hearing

      The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled a hearing for April 15 at which Social Security’s Commissioner will testify. Bisignano will be testifying in his capacity as CEO of the IRS, a position that doesn’t really exist, but he may get some questions about his official job at Social Security.

Bisignano Controversial At IRS

     From Politico:

… The unusual nature of [Bisignano’s] role [as “CEO” of the IRS] — one that doesn’t exist in federal law — is raising questions about who’s really in charge of the agency as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent holds the title of acting IRS commissioner. Fueling the scrutiny is the fact that Bisignano also serves as commissioner of the Social Security Administration. …

The unusual nature of Bisignano’s position is at the heart of concerns voiced by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle as well as agency staff over whether he can be a change agent for an agency that’s struggled to improve customer service after dramatic swings in leadership and operations since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025. The questions are set to be aired publicly when he appears for the first time before the Senate Finance Committee on April 15, just as the first tax filing season of Trump’s second term comes to a close. …

Six people at the IRS, who were granted anonymity to avoid retribution, described a leader who has claimed credit for others’ work, sown discord and acted as Trump’s lieutenant. …

One IRS official called Bisignano “a fake” and said the only notable recent update to the refund tool was making the service accessible through “individual online accounts,” which happened before he came to the agency. The official said Bisignano’s order for the IRS to review and justify contracts made him a “single person chokepoint for procurement” who impaired the agency’s ability to move forward on efforts like using artificial intelligence to aid with tax collection. …

Interesting Parallel

      From the Washington Post:

A federal judge has found that the Internal Revenue Service violated federal law “approximately 42,695 times” when it shared confidential taxpayer addresses with immigration enforcement officials last summer.


U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued the ruling Thursday as part of ongoing litigation over a data-sharing arrangement between the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security.


Federal law requires that before the IRS hands over a taxpayer’s address, a requesting agency must first provide the IRS with the name and address of the person it’s looking for. The requirement exists to ensure that the government can access confidential tax records only for individuals it has already specifically identified.
The ruling finds that DHS did not follow this law. The judge wrote that the vast majority of the nearly 47,300 taxpayer addresses the IRS shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in August were disclosed without the IRS confirming that ICE provided a valid address for the person whose records it was seeking. … 

     This happened just before Bisignano became the “CEO” of the IRS. The data compromises at Social Security happened just before Bisignano became Commissioner of Social Security.

Interview With Commissioner

      The AARP recently interviewed Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano. They’ve published a transcript. The questions were only of the softball variety. They didn’t even ask about his dual role with the IRS!

Bisignano To Testify At Congressional Hearing

      The House Ways and Means Committee has scheduled a hearing with Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano for 10:00 on March 4. However, this hearing concerns Bisignano’s position as “CEO” of the IRS, a position that doesn’t really exist. Nothing will prevent Committee members from asking questions about Social Security or Bisignano’s business history.

Bisignano’s Other Job

 

    The New York Times has a piece on Frank Bisignano’s time as “CEO” of the Internal Revenue Service that touches a bit on Bisignano’s position at the Social Security Administration. There’s no such position as CEO of the IRS but he’s leading it anyway. Here’s a brief excerpt from the piece:

… He works at the I.R.S. roughly two days a week, commuting from his home in New Jersey to Washington in his private plane, according to five people familiar with his schedule.

“I run two large organizations,” Mr. Bisignano said. “I don’t divide my time. On any given day, for example at 11:15 today, I will have an S.S.A. call, and at 12:30 I will have an I.R.S. call. They’re just two big divisions I run.” …

     Two days a week at the IRS. How often is he present at his Social Security office? Probably not that much. I think we know which job he regards as his day job.

Which Is His Day Job?

      From Tax Notes:

IRS CEO Frank Bisignano is positioned to lead the tax agency through the next filing season and beyond, according to observers.

After seeing seven different commissioners — including one who underwent a full-length confirmation process — the IRS ended 2025 with a leader whose position didn’t exist two months ago. …

If Bisignano Signs Off On This, He’d Better Hope For A Pardon Before Trump Leaves Office

      From the Wall Street Journal: