The removal of the Internal Revenue Service commissioner Billy Long after just two months in the post came after the federal tax collection agency said it could not release some information on taxpayers suspected of being in the US illegally, it was reported on Saturday.
The IRS and the White House had clashed over using tax data to help locate suspected undocumented immigrants soon before Long was dismissed by the administration, according to the Washington Post.
Long’s dismissal came less than two months after he was confirmed, making his service as Senate-confirmed IRS commissioner the briefest in the agency’s 163-year history. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent will serve as acting commissioner, making him the agency’s seventh leader this year.
The outlet reported the Department of Homeland Security had sent the IRS a list of 40,000 names on Thursday that it suspects of being in the country illegally. DHS asked the tax service to crosscheck confidential taxpayer data to verify their addresses.
The IRS reportedly responded that it was able to verify fewer than 3% of the names on the DHS list, and mostly names that came with an individual taxpayer identification, or ITIN number, provided by DHS.
Administration officials then requested information on the taxpayers the IRS identified, which the service declined to do, citing taxpayer privacy rights.
The White House has identified the IRS as a component of its crackdown on illegal immigration and hopes that the tax agency help locate as many as 7 million people in the US without authorization. In April, homeland security struck a data sharing agreement with the treasury department – which oversees the IRS.
But Long appears to have resisted acting on that agreement, saying the IRS would not hand over confidential taxpayer information outside its statutory obligation to the treasury.
Related: Trump removes IRS commissioner Billy Long two months after he was sworn in
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson rejected the notion that the IRS was not in harmony with administration priorities.
“Any absurd assertion other than everyone being aligned on the mission is simply false and totally fake news,” Johnson told the Post. “The Trump administration is working in lockstep to eliminate information silos and to prevent illegal aliens from taking advantage of benefits meant for hardworking American taxpayers,” she added.
In fact, undocumented immigrants paid $96.7bn in federal, state and local taxes in 2022, including $59.4bn to the federal government, helping to fund social security and Medicare, despite being excluded from most benefits, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy thinktank.
DHS told the Post that its agreement with IRS “outlines a process to ensure that sensitive taxpayer information is protected, while allowing law enforcement to effectively pursue criminal violations”.
Pressure on federal agencies to conform to administration priorities has also led to pressures on the Census Bureau to conduct a mid-decade population review as well as the firing of Bureau of Labor head last week after it published a unfavorable job report.
After being dismissed on Friday, Long, a former six-term Missouri congressman, said that he would be the new US ambassador to Iceland.
“It is a honor to serve my friend President Trump and I am excited to take on my new role as the ambassador to Iceland,” Long said in post on X. “I am thrilled to answer his call to service and deeply committed to advancing his bold agenda. Exciting times ahead!”
He followed that up with a more humorous entry that referred to former TV Superman actor Dean Cain’s decision, at 59, to join to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency.
“I saw where Former Superman actor Dean Cain says he’s joining ICE so I got all fired up and thought I’d do the same. So I called @realDonaldTrump last night and told him I wanted to join ICE and I guess he thought I said Iceland? Oh well.”
