Top Tax Official Is Leaving After Warning About Audits

A top Treasury Department official is being pushed out after telling the White House it was flirting with breaking the law on IRS meddling. Kenneth Kies, assistant Treasury secretary and acting IRS chief counsel, warned that a potential move would run afoul of a statute that bars the president, vice president, and senior officials from trying to start or stop specific IRS audits, the Wall Street Journal reports. Violating that law—rarely tested and enforceable only by the administration—can carry prison time and fines. Kies now is to leave his post in the coming weeks.

The longtime GOP tax power broker, who once represented President Trump in private practice but has been recused from Trump-related matters, had increasingly clashed with White House officials. They bristled at his reliance on IRS audit rules, per the Journal, even on broader policy questions, and allies later criticized him as an obstacle to Trump's agenda. Kies helped unwind a number of Biden-era partnership-tax rules but not as many as some Trump advisers wanted, and he drew heat over his approach to contentious conservation-easement tax breaks. His team repeatedly had refused to work on a deal with the Justice Department to grant Trump, his family and businesses broad immunity from tax scrutiny, per Reuters, an arrangement a judge struck down. Kies' exit extends the turnover atop the government's tax apparatus, including a recent IRS commissioner who lasted less than two months.