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<\/p>\n Email Link<\/p>\n \n President Donald Trump<\/a> is ousting Billy Long from his role as commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service just two months after he was confirmed to the position, four sources familiar told CNN.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump has already selected Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent<\/a> to serve as the acting head of the IRS while the administration seeks a more permanent replacement, according to two White House officials.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump is expected to nominate Long, a former GOP congressman, for an ambassadorship, three of the sources familiar told CNN. Long said in a post on X<\/a> that he was \u201cexcited to take on my new role as the ambassador to Iceland.\u201d He did not address his departure from the IRS.\n <\/p>\n \n The IRS has faced an unusually turbulent period<\/a> in Trump\u2019s second term, churning through several different leaders.\n <\/p>\n \n The IRS referred comment to the Treasury Department, and Treasury did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Long\u2019s removal was first reported by The New York Times<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Long was an unorthodox pick to lead the IRS, given his limited tax experience<\/a>, his ties to a fraud-riddled tax credit, and his past support for abolishing the agency. But there weren\u2019t any public signs in recent weeks that the Trump loyalist\u2019s future at the IRS was in jeopardy.\n <\/p>\n \n Known for his gregarious and friendly personality, Long occasionally sent staff-wide emails to all IRS employees telling them they could leave early on Fridays, a source familiar told CNN. He sent one of these emails on Thursday, with the subject line: \u201cIt\u2019s Almost FriYay,\u201d according to a copy of the message obtained by CNN.\n <\/p>\n \n In that company-wide missive, he shared lessons from one of his fraternity brothers who he said runs the parent company of Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, and talked about \u201cbuilding a new culture at the IRS.\u201d As in previous weeks, Long told the staff they could leave early before the weekend.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWith this being Thursday before another FriYay, please enjoy a 70-minute early exit tomorrow,\u201d Long wrote. \u201cThat way you\u2019ll be well rested for my 70th birthday on Monday.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n He signed the message: \u201cCall Me Billy.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n With Long\u2019s departure, and with Bessent taking over as acting commissioner, seven different people have led the beleaguered agency since Trump won the 2024 election.\n <\/p>\n \n There hasn\u2019t ever been this level of rapid-fire turnover at the commissioner level in IRS history. And there has also been significant tumult among the rank-and-file: The agency lost 25% of its workforce<\/a> under Trump amid government cuts and mass buyouts, according to a July inspector general report.\n <\/p>\n \n The Biden-appointed and Senate-confirmed commissioner Danny Werfel resigned when Trump took office, even though his statutory five-year term hadn\u2019t expired.\n <\/p>\n \n Werfel was succeeded as acting commissioner by Doug O\u2019Donnell, a career official who abruptly retired<\/a> in February after policy clashes with Trump appointees. Then came Melanie Krause, another career official, who resigned<\/a> in April after Trump allies pushed through a deal to share sensitive taxpayer data with immigration agencies.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump then announced<\/a> that the next acting commissioner would be Gary Shapley, a career IRS agent who is best known for going public with allegations that the Justice Department went easy on Hunter Biden while investigating his taxes. But Shapley\u2019s appointment was opposed by Bessent \u2014 and Shapley was ousted<\/a> within days.\n <\/p>\n \n One of Bessent\u2019s allies, Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender, then took over as acting commissioner before the GOP-run Senate confirmed Long in June.\n <\/p>\n \n This story has been updated with additional reporting and context.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook Tweet Email Link President Donald Trump is ousting Billy Long from his role as commissioner of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-55466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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