IRS Acting Director Replaced by Deputy Treasury Secretary Days After Appointment

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he will ensure the former acting director, Gary Shipley, will continue to work in a senior government role.

A file photo of the IRS building in Washington. J. David Ake/AP Photo

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday confirmed that the Trump administration is replacing the acting director of the IRS, replacing Gary Shapley with Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender.

“Trust must be brought back to the IRS, and I am fully confident that ... Faulkender is the right man for the moment,” Bessent wrote in a post on X. “Gary Shapley’s passion and thoughtfulness for approaching ways by which to create durable and lasting reforms at the IRS is essential to our work, and he remains among my most important senior advisors.”

After Shapley and another official, Joseph Ziegler, finish an ongoing investigation, the administration “will ensure they are both in senior government roles that will enable the results of their investigation to translate into meaningful policy changes,” Bessent added.

Shapley, who was named acting IRS director earlier this week, notably came forward and said that when he was a former IRS criminal investigator, the Department of Justice (DOJ) slow-walked its investigation into Hunter Biden. He provided whistleblower testimony to House Republicans as they claimed that the Justice Department didn’t move on the investigation due to him being the son of then-President Joe Biden.

President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the IRS, former Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.), is still awaiting confirmation in the GOP-controlled Senate. Meanwhile, Faulkender was confirmed in the Senate earlier this year to be deputy secretary under Bessent after previously working in the first Trump administration.

Faulkender said in a statement at the time he would work in “delivering prosperity for the American people, the reprivatization of our economy, national security through economic security, and working to support the President’s America First agenda.”

Earlier Friday, reports citing anonymous officials claimed that Shapley would be leaving and he'd be replaced by Faulkender. Bessent did not address why Shapley was being replaced with Faulkender and did not address claims in those reports that his replacement was part of a behind-the-scenes division between the secretary and Trump adviser Elon Musk.

Trump picked Shapley on Tuesday following the departure of the previous interim head, Melanie Krause, who quit the tax-collecting agency after it struck a deal to share data with federal agents on illegal immigrants in the United States.

The move comes just days after the April 15 deadline expired for millions of Americans to file their 2024 tax returns, and also as the agency released a statement on Friday saying its whistleblower office produced its first operating plan.

“The IRS Whistleblower Office Operating Plan incorporates extensive feedback received from whistleblowers, whistleblower practitioners, IRS employees, oversight bodies and other program stakeholders,” the IRS office’s director, John Hinman, said in a statement. “Whistleblower information that the IRS can act on is an important component of effective tax administration as it bolsters the fair, efficient and effective enforcement of our nation’s tax laws, the success of our voluntary tax system and our efforts to reduce the tax gap.”

Reuters contributed to this report.