Treasury names Social Security head as CEO of IRS

By Tami Luhby, Marshall Cohen, CNN

(CNN) — Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano will also take on the newly created role of Chief Executive Officer of the Internal Revenue Service, the Treasury Department announced Monday.

Bisignano, who was CEO of the payments multinational Fiserv before being confirmed as the head of Social Security in May, will continue leading that agency, which distributes monthly payments to more than 74 million beneficiaries.

In an unusual arrangement, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will remain acting commissioner of the IRS, which has had multiple chiefs over the past year. Bisignano will be in charge of managing the IRS and overseeing its day-to-day operations, while reporting to Bessent, the department’s announcement said. The arrangement means Bisignano would not have to go through Senate confirmation, allowing him to start working immediately.

The appointment comes as the IRS, which has lost a sizable share of its staff under the Trump administration’s quest to downsize the federal government, must put in place major tax changes from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act before the tax filing season starts in January. That involves writing new regulations, updating forms and technology and training the agency’s customer service employees. Some outside experts and the Treasury’s internal watchdog office have already questioned whether the beleaguered IRS will be capable of doing so in time.

Also, Bisignano joins the agency in the midst of a government shutdown. The IRS is using funds from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to keep all of its roughly 74,300 staffers on the job, according to its contingency plan. However, the plan only covers expenses through this Wednesday, and thus far there has been no indication of what would happen if the impasse lasts longer than that.

At the IRS, Bisignano will “sharpen our focus on collections, privacy, and customer service,” Bessent said in a statement.

“The IRS and SSA – two of the most public-facing and broadly impactful federal agencies – also share many of the same technological and customer service goals,” the Treasury Department said in a statement. “This makes Mr. Bisignano a natural choice for this role.”

The White House praised the move.

“Bisignano’s immensely successful private sector career running payment processing and financial services companies makes him an invaluable asset for the IRS,” Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. “President Trump pledged to protect and preserve Social Security and cut taxes for working-class Americans. Frank Bisignano will help the Administration deliver on these pledges.”

Bisignano has promised to improve customer service and enhance technology at Social Security.

Turmoil at the IRS

The IRS cycled through six leaders this year before Bessent was named acting commissioner in August. The agency has also had to contend with the loss of many staffers, as well as a highly controversial deal to share sensitive taxpayer data with immigration agencies, which now faces multiple legal challenges.

Bessent took over from Billy Long, who was ousted from the full-time IRS commissioner role just two months after he was confirmed. Long, a former GOP congressman, auctioneer and tax adviser, said he was being named US ambassador to Iceland.

The surprise shakeup occurred one day after the IRS largely rebuffed a request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to provide the last-known address for more than 1.2 million immigrants that the Trump administration believes overstayed deportation orders.

The IRS, under Long’s watch, only provided ICE with address information for about 47,000 people, because of longstanding taxpayer privacy laws that restrict mass data-sharing, according to court filings.

The IRS lost more than 25,000 employees, or about a quarter of its workforce, to various incentive offers, including the administration’s deferred resignation program, and some layoffs, including the termination of several thousand probationary workers, according to a July report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

The downsizings did not affect this year’s tax filing season, according to a separate report released last week from the inspector general’s office. However, it raised red flags about the coming season, according to the same report.

“We expect workforce reductions to impact key processing programs and customer service going forward,” the office wrote in the report. “We are concerned about how this will impact the 2026 Filing Season. Key IRS functions responsible for managing the filing season have lost 17 to 19 percent of their workforce.”

IRS leaders estimate they’ll need to hire about 3,500 employees to meet the customer service goal on its toll-free telephone line, the office wrote. The agency’s effort to expand the scanning and digital processing of paper-filed tax returns is delayed. Plus, the downsizing adds more challenges for the upcoming season.

“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act will require the IRS to make substantial changes ahead of the 2026 Filing Season, but the agency will have fewer Information Technology resources to timely update processing systems,” the office wrote.

Tackling customer service at Social Security

Since Bisignano took charge at Social Security, he and the agency have repeatedly touted the customer service improvements already taking place at that agency.

In particular, he said at a White House event commemorating the program’s 90th anniversary in August that callers only had to wait an average of 8 minutes to speak to an agent on the phone during the prior month.

However, the metric he cited does not truly show how long it takes to reach an agent, experts say. It does not account for the amount of time callers have to wait on hold to speak to a representative or receive a call back.

The agency told CNN in August that it slashed all types of wait times by at least half in July, when it shifted 1,000 workers to answer the national 800 number.

The Social Security Administration’s acting inspector general has opened a review of the agency’s call center wait times and its ability to deliver services to Americans.

The investigation was requested by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has repeatedly voiced concerns about the agency’s performance after a Department of Government Efficiency-led reorganization.

Several Social Security advocacy groups questioned whether Bisignano would be able to handle both jobs.

“Naming Bisignano CEO of another crucial federal agency while he serves as SSA commissioner demonstrates the Trump administration’s indifference toward the 70 million Americans who depend on Social Security,” Max Richtman, CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. “Never before has a Social Security Commissioner been asked to split his attention between two agencies.”

CNN’s Samantha Waldenberg contributed to this story.

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