Senator Warren Demands Secretary Bessent Recuse Himself from IRS Firing Decisions Given His Personal History of Tax Avoidance
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote to Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent demanding that he recuse himself from any Internal Revenue Service (IRS) decisions relating to the agency’s hiring freeze and further IRS employee firings given his troubling history of tax avoidance.
During Secretary Bessent’s Senate confirmation, reports revealed that he had engaged in extraordinary—and potentially illegal—efforts to abuse loopholes and avoid paying millions of dollars in taxes. Now, as head of the agency overseeing the IRS, he is responsible for implementing President Trump’s hiring freeze and layoffs at the IRS, which includes overseeing actions that recover unpaid taxes from tax cheats.
“Given your own history of skirting tax rules, I ask that you take steps to pay back the taxes that you owe to the American public and recuse yourself from any decisions regarding the hiring freeze and layoffs at the IRS,” wrote Senator Warren.
This follows a letter that Senator Warren and her colleagues sent in January requesting that Secretary Bessent take additional steps to address his reported use of tax avoidance techniques. In response, Bessent said that he “faithfully endeavored” to follow the law but did not substantively answer any of Senator Warren’s questions about the allegations against him.
The actions of the Treasury Secretary with respect to the IRS are even more important now, given President Trump and Congressional Republicans’ efforts to attack the IRS, including imposing a hiring freeze, firing thousands of employees, and rolling back progress that the IRS has made in auditing wealthy tax cheats.
“Slashing the agency in half would decimate collection efforts, including by emboldening tax evaders, the vast majority of which are ultra-wealthy individuals like yourself,” wrote the senator.
Already, the wealthiest five percent of Americans evade an estimated $591 billion in taxes annually. It is estimated that cutting the IRS in half would lead to an additional $2.4 trillion in lost revenue over the next decade.
“I am concerned that your own history of using abusive and potentially illegal tax avoidance techniques may impact your ability to objectively determine whether to fire additional IRS employees and when to lift President Trump’s hiring freeze,” concluded the senator.
Senator Warren is requesting Secretary Bessent (1) recuse himself from any further Treasury Department discussion(s) or decision(s) related to further IRS firings and the lifting of the hiring freeze and (2) end the questions about his own adherence to tax law by paying back to the IRS the full amount of taxes that the Senate Finance Committee staff found that he did not pay because of questionable tax avoidance tactics.
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