FILE PHOTO: Acting Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Danny Werfel takes his seat to testify before a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the status of the IRS’s targeting of political groups, on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 27, 2013. REUTERS
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Senate voted to confirm management consultant Danny Werfel as the new Internal Revenue Service commissioner on Thursday, returning the former Obama administration budget official to the tax agency he briefly led on an acting basis.
Five Republicans crossed party lines to support Werfel in the 54-42 vote, more than offsetting Democratic Senator Joe Manchin’s vote against President Joe Biden’s nominee in a protest against his administration’s implementation of clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Werfel, who previously led Boston Consulting Group’s public sector practice, is charged with leading a massive transformation of the IRS, with $80 billion in new funding approved last year to boost collections of unpaid taxes, modernize technology and improve taxpayer services.
The agency in the coming weeks is due to produce a spending blueprint on how it will deploy the $80 billion in new funding over the next decade.
