The new commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Billy Long, explained his plans for the agency and the new tax bill during his first public talk as IRS commissioner Monday during the National Association of Enrolled Agents' tax summit.
Long is the 51st commissioner of the IRS and was
Long noted that this past tax season went well despite predictions of turmoil before he was confirmed and sworn in after a long wait. "We've got a lot of great people that work there," he said.
A former congressman and auctioneer who plans to apply his skills to the IRS, Long doesn't have a tax background. He grew up in Springfield, Missouri, and went to a real estate school. When he graduated, interest rates were so high that he found it was difficult to sell a house. He signed up for the Missouri Auction School, which he had read in a Newsweek article was referred to as the "Harvard of auctioneering."
"I learned how to auction real estate, and I had a 32-year career as a real estate broker, and 31 years as an auctioneer," he said. "I come to the IRS with a diversified background. Then I ran for office because I thought it was important for somebody that's actually signed the front of a check to go to Congress, not a career politician. I said, I'll go six terms, go home, and that's what I did. I did take a shot in the Senate because Roy Blunt was retiring the same year that I came out of Congress." However, he admitted he came in last place among the 21 contenders.
Long was sworn in a little over a week ago and one of the first events he attended was a graduation ceremony in Georgia for IRS Criminal Investigation Unit agents.
He was asked about his plans for implementing the massive new tax bill and joked about the name.
"I bet you all never thought you'd meet Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill in person, but here I am," he joked. "They called it the One Big, Beautiful Bill after me."
He has been consulting with officials in the Treasury Department such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Deputy Secretary Michael Faulkender and their staff on implementing the bill.
"They had this thing going like a well-oiled machine," said Long. "They have the people in place for different parts and sections of the bill, and they have been there for a long time, and they know what they're doing."
He said he has been having conversations with Faulkender every week on implementation and he predicted they're going to get it done.
"There's a lot of provisions in there, a lot of rulemaking needs to be done," said Long. "Every day I walk in there and I feel like I'm on a tightrope juggling. I don't know whether to drop the ball or fall off the rope myself, but implementation is going to be key to getting the tax season started on time. I talked to one of our top guys in the IRS last week while I was down on the Atlanta visit, and I said, 'What's our start date?'" And he said that President's Day historically is our start date."
The employee predicted they would need every day until then. Tax season usually starts in late January, not February. "They have this thing down pat," said Long. "They know what they're doing. They know how to do it. So I'm just going to hide and watch," he joked.
Making changes at the IRS
Long hopes to change the culture of the agency.
"When you get nominated for a position like this, you don't know what to do, what to ask, what to plan for," he said. "My plan was to watch old YouTube videos of former IRS commissioners. And after watching a lot of these, I called President Trump one day, and I said, 'I would like for my hearing to be on February 2.' And he said, 'Why is that?' And I said, because it's like Groundhog Day. I've been going back to 1997 with [former Commissioner] Charles Rossotti. Every year, it's the same complaints over and over and over. A lot of it, I think, is that we're not taking advantage of our employee partners."
He has been meeting with those employees one on one. "I thought, how many people have ever stopped and asked the 1,533 employee partners that work in the building where I work at 1111 Constitution, and how many times has someone stopped and said, 'What do you think? How's your life? How's your kids? How's your husband's surgery coming?' I want to know about their lives, but I also want to know what they think."
He arrives at the office 90 minutes early every day and schedules 10-minute meetings with employees, in six slots a day. The first woman he met had worked there for 18 years and never been in the commissioner's office before.
"And to me, that's stinking thinking," said Long. "Why does the commissioner have to be the Wizard of Oz? Why does he have to be the man behind the curtain?"
He plans to open up the meetings to employees outside the building and at some point go virtual for meetings with remote employees.
He alluded to reports of overcrowding at IRS facilities since a return-to-office order. "We're going to put 500 people on the sixth floor, moving over from another building there in D.C.," said Long. "I said I want to go up to the sixth floor. I want to see what it looks like. We're going to move 500 people there. I went on that tour and I thought I went in and out of every office. I didn't, but I tried to, and they were just shocked that the commissioner would take time to come."
Nevertheless, the IRS has been implementing steep cutbacks, with approximately 25% of the workforce now gone as of May, according to a recent
"In real estate, when we had too many agents, we'd take one plaque for agent of the month, put two of them in a conference room, and put that plaque in there, and only one of them would come out alive," said Long. "That's how we pared down our people. But when you build a culture and bring everybody along … . It's not my culture. I don't want to ram my culture down their throat, but I want them to tell me what the culture at the Internal Revenue Service is going to be. And we're off to a great start with these 10-minute meetings. People are loving them, and I'm getting a lot of good ideas."
Long was asked about the role of enrolled agents. "Just stay in touch with your folks at the IRS," he advised. He offered to provide his chief of staff's email address to the NAEA.
"What I find is when people get a hold of me and say, 'I've been under audit for four years, and they can't tell me where my audit is, who has my audit or anything,'" he said. "I want people to be able to go and get that information. I want you all to be able to go and get that information for your clients. And it's staggering how effective the people at the IRS are when you get it to the right person. I've had things that have dragged along for two or three years, and they can't get a simple answer."
He said he was recently listening in on a taxpayer call in Atlanta on a second headset and felt like crying when he overheard a widow who had been repeatedly calling the IRS for help five times about her refund check. "I said, when you call her, you tell her it was her lucky day," said Long. "The commissioner happened to be listening on the other line. And he called her and said, 'Ma'am, it was your lucky day. The commissioner was listening. I'm here to help you. We have located your refund check, and we're getting it in the mail to you.'"
He wants to provide similar help with tax audits and said Sam Corcos, a former DOGE employee who is
"I don't want her to have the commissioner on the line," said Long. "I don't want to have to call back. I don't care about Direct File. I care about Direct Audit."
He said Corcos is building technology to be able to trace where audits are currently stuck.
"Get our computers upgraded to where people can do that," he said. "As far as building the culture, that's what we need to do, is be able to get the employees where they're in a better place, where they don't feel like they have to look at their watch."
He compared it to a Mickey Mouse watch with Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse holding hands. "If we can redesign it a little bit and make Walt the IRS and Mickey the taxpayer holding hands in partnership," he said. "I want to be partners with my employees, and I want to be partners with the taxpayers. And that's my goal."
Long said he is an expert on UFOs and used to teach a class on them. He plans to bring a different variation of UFO to his job at the IRS. "UFO: upbeat, friendly and open," he said. "And that's how I want to operate with my employee partners and with taxpayers."
