Billy Long Confirmed as IRS Commissioner of Internal Revenue (6/15/25)

On June 12, 2025, the Senate confirmed President’s Trump’s nomination of Billy Long as Commissioner of Internal Revenue. See Wikipedia, Billy Long, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Long (Last edited 6/15/25 and viewed 6/15/25). I just updated the working draft for the 2025 editions of my Federal Tax Procedure Book. I copy and paste the relevant portion as of 6/15/25 with footnotes (note that the footnote numbers in the working draft, but in the final will certainly be different): 

                   3.     Commissioner of Internal Revenue.

           The Commissioner of Internal Revenue is a Presidential appointee confirmed by the Senate. The Commissioner heads the vast IRS bureaucracy. n216 Historically, the Commissioner has been a leading tax practitioner, most often a tax lawyer. Because of the perception that tax practitioners may not be the best managers, the statute now requires that the Commissioner have “demonstrated ability in management.”n217 Tax practitioners are not necessarily excluded, but the field is much broader now.
   n216 § 7803.
   n217 § 7803(a)(1)(A).

          On June 12, 2025, the Senate confirmed President Trump’s choice for Commissioner of Internal Revenue. The nomination and confirmation were controversial because (i) the confirmation was preceded by chaos among the acting IRS leadership,n218 and (ii), more importantly, Long has no or no credible experience in either tax or management experience.n219 Nevertheless, he is the Commissioner now. n220
   n218  Political Thrashing Around Acting Commissioners and Commissioner of Internal Revenue (Federal Tax Procedure Blog 4/18/25; 4/19/25).
   n219 Professionally (if that is the right word), Long was a realtor and auctioneer until serving in the House of Representatives from 2011-2023. Long attended college but did not graduate, subsequently graduating from the Missouri Auction School. In 2023, Long became a “tax consultant” promoting dubious tax claims related to Employee Retention Credits. In that role, he promoted himself as a “Certified Tax & Business Consultant,” a title he earned by attending a three-day course offered by a tax promoter. See Wikipedia, Billy Long, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Long (Last edited 6/15/25 and viewed 6/15/25). JAT Editorial Comment: Long appears to have no relevant qualifications to be Commissioner of Internal Revenue other than sycophancy to President Trump which is the only credential he needed to be approved by the Senate on a party line vote. While awaiting his Senate confirmation, Long served as Senior Advisor in OPM (Office of Management and Budget). It is unclear to me what role he served as Senior Advisor, but I suppose one salient benefit was that, receiving a Government salary, he would have been foreclosed from abusing the tax system as he did before taking the Senior Advisor role. (That is, if he honored conflicts of interest policies, although Trump and his minions appear to have only passing acquaintance, if any, with conflicts of interest policies.)
   n220 Perhaps someone will litigate the issue of whether Long is statutorily disqualified for the position.

Supreme Court Holds that Tax Court Levy CDP Jurisdiction is Mooted by Satisfaction of Underlying Assessment (6/13/25)

I previously blogged on the

• Third Circuit's opinion in Zuch v. Commissioner, 97 F.4th 81 (3rd Cir. 2024). 3rd Circuit Holds Tax Court Has Jurisdiction to Determine Overpayments in CDP Proceedings (Federal Tax Procedure Blog 3/29/24; 3/30/24), here; and
• The Supreme Court's granting of the Government's petition for writ of certiorari. Supreme Court Accepts Cert in Zuch as to Mootness in CDP where IRS Collected by Offset the Tax Subject to Levy (Federal Tax Procedure Blog 1/13/25), here.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court decided Zuch, holding that the Tax Court loses jurisdiction over a CDP case when the assessment supporting the original proposed levy has been paid so that there is nothing behind the levy. See Opinion of the Court by Justice Barrett, joined by all other Justices except Gorsuch who dissented (SC here and GS here [to come]). The Opinion of the Court is a short (at least for Opinions of the Court) and relatively straightforward opinion. I therefore will not belabor readers with a scholarly (perhaps pseudo-scholarly) discussion of the opinion. My off-hand summary is that what is in issue in a levy CDP case is the levy and once the proposed levy is mooted by satisfaction of the underlying assessment, there is nothing left for the Tax Court to do.

So, I get back to the questions I considered in the blog entry reporting the granting of cert. The relevant ones are:

A Primer on Judicial Review of Tax Regulations after Loper Bright (6/4/25; 6/6/25)

Loper Bright held that courts review interpretive regulations de novo rather than with possible deference under the prior Chevron regime. Here are my bullet points focusing primarily on notice and comment Treasury regulations (the type subject to possible deference under the Chevron regime):

• Loper Bright de novo review means that the court will determine and apply the best interpretation (whether or not the regulation interpretation is the best interpretation).
• The sole exception to de novo review is that courts will apply some type of deference (I call it Loper Bright deference) if the statute explicitly or fairly implies the agency is to have discretion in the interpretation.
• Under Skidmore, courts may use the agency interpretation to help reach the best interpretation, (Skidmore is often called deference, but it is not deference because the court must still determine and apply the best interpretation and only uses the persuasiveness of the agency interpretation to determine the best interpretation; Skidmore is better described as “respect” rather than deference; deference means the court applies the agency “not best” interpretation rather than its own best interpretation.)
• Interpretive regulations may also be reviewed for procedural regularity under the APA § 706(2)(A)'s “arbitrary and capricious” standard (also called “hard look” review), a deferential standard that is, theoretically, much more agency-forgiving standard than de novo review standard.

I think it may be helpful to elaborate on the last bullet point. A prominent instance in tax of such arbitrary and capricious review is Hewitt v. Commissioner, 21 F.4th 1336 (11th Cir. 2021), here, holding that Treasury failed in the notice and comment process to address material comments; the court did not hold (see p. 1339 n. 1) that if Treasury had not committed that procedural footfault, the interpretation would have been invalid under the Chevon regime (now replaced by the Loper Bright de novo regime for testing interpretations). For a recent statement of how this works, the Supreme Court said in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, 605 U.S. ___,  ___ S.Ct. ___ [to come], 2025 WL 1520964 (2025), SC here and GS here (quote is from Supreme Court Slip Op. 8-9):

    As a general matter, when an agency interprets a statute, judicial review of the agency's interpretation is de novo. See Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U. S. 369, 391-392 (2024). But when an agency exercises discretion granted by a statute, judicial review is typically conducted under the Administrative Procedure Act's deferential arbitrary-and-capricious standard. Under that standard, a court asks not whether it agrees with the agency decision, but rather only whether the agency action was reasonable and reasonably explained. See Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co., 463 U. S. 29, 43 (1983); FCC v. Prometheus Radio Project, 592 U. S. 414, 423 (2021).