Former IRS Heads Call to Replace Outgoing Commissioner

Multiple former heads of the Internal Revenue Service are calling on President Joe Biden to replace outgoing Commissioner Charles Rettig before his term ends in November.

"A prompt appointment of the next commissioner is essential," former IRS Commissioners Charles Rossotti, Fred Goldberg, Mark Everson, and John Koskinen said in a statement obtained by The New York Times. "Until that position is filled, essential improvements to the I.R.S. are at serious risk of delay, if not failure."

"Only a confirmed commissioner can build external and internal support for such a big and complex transformation of an agency," they added.

Rossotti, who was IRS commissioner under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, told the Washington Examiner: "Not very long in the future, anybody, realistically, is going to be asking what are the improvements that are visible that the IRS is making now that we’ve provided funds."

"People think the IRS [is] like a machine that runs by itself," he added. "It doesn’t. They’ll do the same thing tomorrow that they did today. But that’s not what’s expected when you provide a large increase in funding, and the funding was put there to improve performance."

Lawrence Gibbs, who headed the IRS under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, told the Examiner that "the organization, the IRS itself, responds to the guidance, the direction, the leadership of both the commissioner and the IRS chief counsel.

"During the times you’ve had acting commissioners and acting chief counsels, the organization has just treaded water until a new commissioner and a new chief counsel could be appointed."

"It takes a commissioner, and chief counsel that are appointed and confirmed to deal with the Congress, the rest of the administration, taxpayer organizations, media, all of the things that mold how the Internal Revenue Service is viewed, and that’s important in terms of people’s willingness to comply, and the ability of the organization to perform," he added.

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