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DOGE downsizing, IRS commissioner switch complicate tax season

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Tax season usually marks the busiest time of the year for IRS professionals, but for the 30,000 staff who have accepted buyouts or been laid off by the agency this year, the calendar has  been painfully clear. 

Higher-ups have not been immune to the upheaval, with four IRS commissioners and multiple unit chiefs departing. Michael Faulkender, former deputy secretary of the Treasury, was announced as the newest acting commissioner on April 18 — replacing a predecessor who had been in place for less than a week.

“The fight against weaponization and politicization at the IRS is a top-tier priority for the Trump administration, and Deputy Secretary Faulkender will continue to make the needed changes both durable and lasting,” a Treasury spokesperson noted. “We urge Congress to act quickly to confirm permanent leadership at the IRS to ensure its ability to best serve taxpayers going forward.”

Read more: Treasury union asks for relief as IRS plans more layoffs

The uncertainty surrounding the IRS started on inauguration day, when previous Commissioner Danny Warfel resigned, citing President Trump’s intention to name former congressman Billy Long, R-Missouri, as the next commissioner. Long has yet to be confirmed however, leading to a power vacuum that has been filled by a series of acting commissioners, most recently Faulkender. 

As the revolving door at the top of the IRS continues to spin, Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency has introduced its own initiatives to the agency. This tax season seemingly saw the end of the government’s Direct File program, after DOGE shut down development work on the project for 2026. This came following a report weeks earlier from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which claimed that the IRS had underreported the cost of the program by millions of dollars. 

“Reported totals did not include an estimated $8.8 million for costs incurred by the Office of Management and Budget for employees detailed to the IRS to help develop and pilot Direct File and costs incurred to create or leverage existing accounts through the IRS’s credential service provider,” said the report regarding the main source of the costs discovered.

Though a significant portion of the funding for enforcement, taxpayer services, and tech modernization are being eliminated by Congress, mass layoffs may be the most salient example of DOGE’s transformation of the IRS.

“My real concern is that anything where you need people at the IRS will take more time,” said David Shapiro, partner and chair of the tax, compensation and benefits practice at law firm Saul Ewing LLP. “That goes for even the most mundane matters. For example, to establish a domestic entity you can just go online and get a tax ID, or do it by phone. A foreign entity can’t do that. So it’s harder for foreigners who want to do business in the U.S. Likewise for low-income taxpayers to resolve an issue through an offer in compromise. This will all go away without agents to help.”

Read more: Tennessee, Arkansas weather victims get tax relief

See below for the latest headlines out of the IRS this month at the conclusion of filing season.

The IRS headquarters in Washington
The IRS headquarters in Washington.

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Leadership changes and layoffs at the IRS

Tax Day 2025 marked the 70th anniversary of the April 15 filing deadline. As tax season has wound down, the uncertainty at the IRS has not.

Many high-level IRS officials have left or been pushed out in the waning months of the filing period, chief information officer Rajiv Uppal being the most recent on a list that includes four commissioners and former acting chief counsel William Paul.

IRS heads are not the only personnel at risk — 30,000 employees have taken buyouts or been laid off and 7,000 probationary workers have been placed on paid leave. A study by Yale’s Budget Lab concluded that 18,200 employees being cut would lead to a $1.4 billion savings in salaries but a $8.3 billion loss in tax revenue. 

Read more: IRS marks Tax Day amid layoffs, cutbacks

Michael Faulkender
Michael Faulkender

Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg

New acting commissioner appointed

After serving as acting commissioner for just three days, Gary Shapley was replaced by Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender — the fifth IRS head of the year. Shapley had achieved notoriety as a whistleblower after testifying against Hunter Biden to the House Oversight Committee as an IRS Criminal Investigation special agent in 2023. 

Reportedly, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent complained to the Trump administration that Shapley had been appointed without his consultation. Shapley had been named a senior advisor to Bessent last month.

Read more: Acting IRS commissioner replaced by Treasury official

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Direct File ending next year after Elon Musk’s IRS reorganization

After Elon Musk posted on X that he had “deleted” the team that built the IRS Direct File system last year, further reporting found that IRS staff had been told to stop preparing the system for 2026. Though tax prep software firms have long opposed the program, former IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel had outlined plans to make the project permanent just last year. 

Lobbying group the American Coalition for Taxpayer Rights advocates for nurturing the public-private Free File partnership. In 2025, nonprofit Code For America helped bring the Direct File program to 25 states, up from 12 the year before. 

“Direct File was a massive success, saving taxpayers millions in fees, saving them time and cutting out an unnecessary middleman that took money out of Americans’ pockets for no good reason. Trump and Secretary Bessent are robbing regular American families to pay back lobbyists that spend millions to make tax filing more expensive and more difficult,” said Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, in a statement.

Read more: IRS Direct File reportedly ending next year 

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Nametags with the IRS logo in a conference room at the Internal Revenue Service campus in Austin, Texas

Jordan Vonderhaar/Photographer: Jordan Vonderhaar/

DOGE creating super API next step in IRS data deregulation

Elon Musk plans to organize the IRS data system around a single API by early May— possibly with the help of Peter Thiel’s Palantir. APIs are necessary for data to transfer from one computer program to another, and the IRS already has several existing ones that this effort would centralize. 

Layoffs and privacy concerns seem to both be impediments to DOGE’s plans. The IRS has announced 20,000 future layoffs, and its 50 senior tech leaders are currently on paid administrative leave. Many special permissions are currently required to access the sensitive data that would be included in this API, and unifying this data would make it all the more a target to bad actors. 

Read more: DOGE to centralize IRS data under one API

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The Internal Revenue Service headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Samuel Corum/Bloomberg

Basis shifting crackdown ended by Trump administration

Citing a February executive order from the Trump administration that established the DOGE deregulatory initiative, the Treasury Department and IRS announced plans to stop designating basis-shifting among partnerships and related parties as “transactions of interest.” Previous regulations had imposed possible penalties under Sections 6707A(a), 6707(a), and 6708 as the IRS had seen the practice to be a possible tax avoidance strategy.

After the IRS found tens of billions of dollars in dubious deductions while auditing a group of basis-shifting transactions last year, then-Commissioner Danny Werfel announced a new unit within the Office of Chief Counsel to target such tax loopholes.

“Taxpayers and their material advisors have criticized the Basis Shifting TOI Regulations as imposing complex, burdensome, and retroactive disclosure obligations on many ordinary-course and tax-compliant business activities, creating costly compliance obligations and uncertainty for businesses,” said a notice from the Treasury and IRS.

Read more: IRS proposes to end crackdown on basis-shifting transactions

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BDO CEO Wayne Berson to retire, Matthew Becker tapped as successor

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BDO USA CEO Wayne Berson will retire effective June 30, 2026, and the firm’s national managing principal of tax Matthew Becker has been tapped by the board of directors to succeed him.

Under the Top 10 Firm’s CEO succession process, the board of directors selects a candidate and its principal group ratifies the candidate. Berson and Becker will meet with the firm’s principals over the next several weeks ahead of the ratification vote, which is expected to take place in July. Once a successor is agreed upon by a majority vote, the board of directors will announce the next CEO, whose term is expected to begin on July 1, 2026.

BDO USA CEO Wayne Berson

BDO USA CEO Wayne Berson

Berson has served as CEO since 2012. During his tenure, the firm has grown nearly 400% to annual revenues of roughly $3 billion, and he oversaw the firm’s transition from a partnership to a corporation and then an ESOP company. He is a member of BDO USA’s board of directors and is a chair on BDO International’s global board of directors, and will continue to serve on both boards until his retirement. He is also a regular member of Accounting Today’s annual listing of the Most Influential People in Accounting.

As national managing principal of tax, Becker oversees the strategy and operations of BDO’s tax practice, which includes over 3,500 tax professionals. He is a member of BDO’s executive leadership team and a member of BDO International’s global tax advisory committee. Becker has also served as chairperson of BDO USA’s board of directors.

The firm plans to provide no further updates until the conclusion of the voting process to ensure a “thorough and unbiased evaluation period for BDO”s principal group,” according to the release.

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Tax Fraud Blotter: Side hustles

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Pardon us; no relief in sight; down on the farm; and other highlights of recent tax cases.

San Francisco: Winery co-owner Brian Fleury, 64, of Napa County, California, has pleaded guilty to aiding and assisting the preparation of a false return.

Fleury and his spouse owned the winery Metropolitan Wines and several vineyards in Napa Valley. For tax years 2014 through 2018, Fleury underreported Metropolitan’s income to his tax preparer. Fleury directed some customers to pay with checks directly to Fleury instead of to Metropolitan and wrote or told his employees to “off the books,” on some of these customers’ invoices. Fleury kept these payments for himself and did not report this as income.

Between 2014 and 2018, he underreported his and his spouse’s income by $822,450.

Fleury also admitted that from 2007 through 2019, he failed to pay federal excise tax that was due on brandy he received, possessed and sold, filing annual reports with the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau that he knew were false.  

In total, he caused a tax loss to the IRS and TTB of $211,092.

Washington, D.C.: President Trump has pardoned Paul Walczak of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, two weeks after Walczak’s sentencing for tax crimes, according to news reports.

Walczak, who was convicted of evading more than $10.9 million in payroll taxes and sentenced to 18 months in prison and two years of supervised release, controlled a network of interconnected health care companies operating under various names, employing more than 600 people.

In 2011, Walczak did not pay two quarters of withheld taxes to the IRS. He evaded collection efforts and continued not paying over taxes from employees’ paychecks and keeping the money to fund what authorities called a lavish lifestyle, including the purchase of a yacht.

He caused a total federal tax loss of $10,912,334.80 and was also ordered to pay $4,381,265.76 in restitution. 

Walczak is the son of Betsy Fago, a longtime Republican donor who recently attended a Trump fundraising dinner, news reports said. Walczak’s attorneys also reportedly maintained that his family sold an engagement ring, a car and a $12.5 million home to repay the tax loss.

Trump was slated to pardon reality show stars Julie and Todd Chrisley, who were found guilty in 2022 of conspiring to defraud community banks out of more than $30 million. A jury convicted them of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit tax evasion. Trump has also reportedly pardoned former Republican Rep. Michael Grimm of New York, who was convicted in November 2014 of tax fraud and related charges stemming from his ownership of a Manhattan restaurant.

Athens, Georgia: Tax preparer Jessica Crawford, 34, who previously admitted filing more than $3.5 million in fraudulent returns tied to a multistate pandemic benefit scheme, has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

FBI agents investigating a multistate unemployment benefit scheme that was conducted during the pandemic discovered texts between conspirators and Crawford, a preparer with Crawford Tax Services. Crawford filed for PUA benefits on behalf of those individuals who had created fake businesses or submitted false information to steal benefits. In return, she received a percentage of the gains.

In 2022, an undercover IRS agent met Crawford to have their taxes prepared, and Crawford asked if the agent did anything on the side. At first the agent said no; Crawford replied that expenses could be deducted. The agent said he sometimes mowed an aunt’s lawn but provided no income or expense amounts. Crawford created a Schedule C business for landscaping on the agent’s federal return and prepared a 1040 and a fictitious Schedule C loss of $19,373, as well as claimed an Earned Income Tax Credit, a Child Tax Credit and a qualified business income deduction. As a result, the agent’s return claimed a fraudulent federal income tax refund of $12,359.

The IRS reviewed 1,261 returns filed by Crawford in tax years 2020 and 2021 and determined that she fraudulently filed returns on behalf of clients, resulting in losses to the IRS exceeding $3 million from false 7202 credits for sick leave and family leave, tax credits and dependent care credits.

Hands-in-jail-Blotter

Marina Del Rey, California: Elana Cohen-Roth, 81, a retired IRS agent, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison after being convicted of 23 felony offenses related to defrauding an elderly victim of her life savings.

Cohen-Roth exploited a professional and personal relationship she’d had with an elderly area resident. A retired IRS agent and professional tax preparer, Cohen-Roth began preparing the then 66-year-old victim’s taxes in 2013. From their friendship, Cohen-Roth gained access to all the victim’s financial information. Cohen-Roth told the victim she would invest in some type of real estate to earn at least 10% at “no risk.”

From December 2013 through September 2019, Cohen-Roth extended “investment opportunities” to the victim on more than 20 occasions in amounts from $25,000 to $150,000. Each time, the victim took money from her legitimate investments and wired it to Cohen-Roth.

Bank records revealed that Cohen-Roth was running a Ponzi scheme where other investors also deposited large sums into her account. Cohen-Roth used some of the elderly victim’s money to pay off these earlier investors and used the rest to support her lavish lifestyle and make gifts to family members.

By September of 2019, the victim had depleted her investment accounts and took out a reverse mortgage to send additional money to Cohen-Roth. The scheme collapsed in 2020 when the victim demanded a return of some of her money so that she could move near her family. Cohen-Roth did not have another source to repay the victim, who did not receive any of her money back.

A jury convicted Cohen-Roth of all 23 felony financial fraud charges. Because of her age, she was sentenced to the middle term of 12 years in state prison rather than the maximum of 28 years.

Richmond, Virginia: Tax preparer Baltej Singh Brar, 42, of South Richmond Hill, New York, has been sentenced to two years in prison for making false statements on loan applications he submitted for clients through pandemic relief.

Brar owned and operated Aspire Tax & Accounting Services and in 2021 began filing loan applications on behalf of other individuals through the Paycheck Protection Program. He advertised that he would file loan applications in exchange for an upfront fee and 10% of the loan value after approval.

Brar instructed prospective applicants to provide him with their Social Security numbers, a copy of their driver’s license, email address, prior bank statements, their 2019 return and a voided check to be used as supporting documentation. Most of Brar’s clients were sole proprietors, including taxi drivers, truck drivers and construction workers. Where clients’ prior year incomes fell below the threshold to receive the maximum PPP loan of $20,833, Brar inflated the income amounts in the applications. Brar caused the Small Business Administration at least $550,000 in losses.

Greensburg, Pennsylvania: Accountant Jonathan A. Weston, a resident of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, has been sentenced to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $8 million in restitution after being convicted of fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to commit money laundering and filing false income tax returns.

From October 2005 to January 2019, Weston, an accountant for Hillandale Farms Co., schemed with another employee to embezzle some $6.8 million from the company and launder the money through businesses they both controlled to buy collectible cars, real estate and other items. 

Between 2013 and 2018, Weston also either failed to file or filed false federal personal income tax returns, including filing a false return in which he underreported more than $500,000 stolen from Hillandale.

He was ordered to pay $6,870,128 in restitution to Hillandale Farms and $1,216,176 to the IRS. He was also ordered to forfeit assets from his crime, including a 2008 Aston Martin, a 1933 Ford Model 40 Coupe and a condominium.

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Counties with highest capital gains per 2025 study

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The more value that investors can receive in the form of long-term capital gains rather than ordinary income, the less they will pay back to Uncle Sam.

Those in the 20 counties below ranked by the average net capital gains reported on their federal returns to the IRS are getting above-average appreciation on their assets with much lower tax rates, generally, than their incoming income, according to a study last month by advisor lead generation and client matchmaking service SmartAsset. The mix of areas known for a large concentration of wealthy residents and regions that don’t immediately come to mind as a home to lots of rich people offered only more evidence of the investment industry’s national scope.

For financial advisors and their clients, the list provided geographic insights into the potential wealth management client base in the areas, and a reminder of important state-level variations in taxes that could affect portfolios and after-tax yields.

“Net capital gains represent the profits a taxpayer recognizes from selling a capital asset after offsetting capital losses. These gains are often created by highly appreciated assets,” Kathy Buchs, a senior tax advisor, team leader and managing director with Cleveland, Ohio-based registered investment advisory firm MAI Capital Management, said in an email.

“We take geography into account when advising clients to sell an asset or consider tax loss harvesting due to state income tax ramifications,” Buchs continued. “For example, California is a high-tax state that does not have preferential rates for capital gains. Therefore, it tends to be much more expensive to recognize gains in that state as compared to others.” 

That difference in tax rules at the state level raises the possibility of strategies such as an incomplete gift non-grantor trust that, in some areas, could “eliminate the state taxation of the trust-owned portfolio,” said Richard Austin, an executive director for estate and business planning with San Diego and Waltham, Massachusetts-based RIA firm Integrated Partners. In some cases, investors can even offset their capital gains for federal tax purposes based on losses in other holdings, he noted in an email.

“Tax efficiency significantly impacts the performance of a client’s portfolio by maximizing the after-tax return on investments,” Austin said. “Investing across different countries and regions can reduce portfolio volatility. Markets in different parts of the world often have low correlation, meaning they don’t always move in the same direction at the same time. If one market experiences a downturn, others might perform well, potentially stabilizing overall returns and the potential for future capital gains. State-specific tax rates impact tax efficiency of a portfolio. The difference in state income taxes creates a significant layer of complexity in achieving tax efficiency for a client’s portfolio.”

Even though any type of data presents the possibility of noise factors affecting any particular region, the study “highlights that taking geography into account is essential when advising clients on their asset allocations,” said Michelle Ash, a senior wealth advisor with the Jacksonville, Florida-based office of RIA firm Mercer Advisors.

“Net capital gains is measured when a person is selling assets, and so it requires past investment success to be in that position,” Ash said in an email. “It’s no surprise to me that Florida would be the top state by this metric. Florida has no state income, inheritance or estate taxes, and so it’s a beneficial place to live when you’re selling assets. These Florida traits also attract a lot of retiring individuals who may be selling assets like homes and businesses when they retire or move.”

In focusing on capital gains, SmartAsset sought to home in on the areas where investors netted the most gains with preferential rates compared to ordinary income, according to the report’s author, SmartAsset Director of Economic Analysis Jaclyn DeJohn.

“Net capital gains, the profits from selling assets like stocks, real estate or businesses, are a key measure of investment success and regional wealth,” DeJohn wrote. “Overall, high net capital gains can signal robust markets and affluent populations, with realized gains potentially boosting local economies through tax revenues and spending.” 

Besides the listing below, here are some of the other interesting takeaways from the study:

  • Three Georgia counties, Chattahoochee, Quitman and Taliaferro, displayed the smallest average net capital gains, at $2,400 or less. Fewer than 10% of returns in the counties had net capital gains.
  • At the state level, West Virginia tax returns had the lowest average net capital gains at $14,612, followed by Wisconsin with $19,590 and Iowa with $20,220.
  • On the other end of the spectrum among the states, federal returns out of Florida ($84,911), Wyoming ($84,246), Nevada ($77,491), the District of Columbia ($58,733) and Texas ($52,926) reported the highest average net capital gains.

Scroll down the slideshow for the ranking of the top 20 counties in the U.S. in terms of average net capital gains. To see a list of the top 10 cities with the highest income among retirees, click here. For the group of the top 20 metropolitan areas where financial advisors’ median pay increased the most last year, follow this link.

Note: The below rankings are based on a report by SmartAsset called, “Where Americans Earn the Most From Investments.” The study crunched the latest tax return data for the 2022 tax year released by the IRS across 3,022 U.S. counties and for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The data include average net capital gains and investment-yield figures like taxable and tax-exempt interest and ordinary and qualified dividends.

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