{"id":889177,"date":"2026-01-31T23:12:29","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T05:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/31\/meet-the-first-ceo-of-the-irs-a-jamie-dimon-protege-facing-a-5-trillion-test-this-tax-season\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T23:12:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T05:12:29","slug":"meet-the-first-ceo-of-the-irs-a-jamie-dimon-protege-facing-a-5-trillion-test-this-tax-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/31\/meet-the-first-ceo-of-the-irs-a-jamie-dimon-protege-facing-a-5-trillion-test-this-tax-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the first CEO of the IRS: A Jamie Dimon protege facing a $5 trillion test this tax season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frank Bisignano\u2019s cell phone lit up, and he recognized the caller. The president was on the line. On this morning in early October, the newly confirmed Social Security commissioner was seated in his 40th<\/sup> floor office in Manhattan\u2019s Tribeca that features a sweeping view of the lower East Side and on to Brooklyn, where he grew up in a blue-collar family to a father who spent 44 years as a customs agent, and a mother who ran a stevedoring outfit. \u201cThe president and my boss, [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent were together in the Oval Office, and the president told me it was Scott\u2019s recommendation that I also<\/em> run the IRS as its first\u00a0 \u2018CEO,\u2019\u201d recalls Bisignano. \u201cI said, \u2018Yes, I\u2019ll do whatever you want,\u2019 and the president said that he\u2019s counting on me to \u2018make the IRS great again,\u2019 just as he\u2019d charged me to do with Social Security.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Those dual jobs make Bisignano probably the back-office administrator wielding the broadest authority in recent U.S. history. He now oversees both the largest retirement system in the world, which pays out $1.5 trillion a year to over 70 million beneficiaries, and a planet-topping revenue machine that collects over $5 trillion in annual taxes that fund over 90% of the federal government\u2019s operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bisignano is a phenomenon neither agency has seen in a long time, if ever; a former super-big-time private-sector CEO who\u2019s running both agencies like they\u2019re the kind of turnaround cases he\u2019s made a career of fixing. He\u2019s an operator, not a bureaucrat, and he\u2019s bringing his restructuring skills to two areas that feature combined operating budgets of over $30 billion and workforces totaling around 150,000, and that famously need a big lift in efficiency and customer service. The likes of tardy tax refunds at the IRS, super-slow disability resolutions at the SSA, and long phone hold times at both agencies are among the most prominent failings that prod so many Americans into believing that government doesn\u2019t work. None of his recent predecessors had significant experience running a big business.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Bisignano is a Jamie Dimon prot\u00e9g\u00e9 who built one of the top careers on Wall Street by constructing and streamlining unglamorous, tech-heavy but highly lucrative functions such as payments networks and treasury services, joining the administration after serving as CEO of credit card payments colossus Fiserv<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And filling double roles is nothing new to him. \u201cPeople ask me, \u2018How do you do two jobs?\u2019 And I really don\u2019t look at it like that,\u201d Bisignano told Fortune <\/em>on Jan. 18 during an exclusive interview, in the same corner office where he got the call from Trump. \u201cAt Citigroup<\/a>, I was at one time deputy head of operations and tech, and also chief administrative officer of the world\u2019s largest global and investment bank. Then, under Jamie at JPMorgan, I was co-COO of the company, and also oversaw the mortgage workout program resulting in the $26 billion federal settlement in 2012 that restarted the housing market.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In an administration staffed by a number of former top business folks, including Commerce and Interior Secretaries Howard Lutnick and Doug Burgum, and Small Business Administration chief Kelly Loeffler, Bisignano is the figure who\u2019s had by far the biggest jobs in the most prominent enterprises.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Now, Bisignano is bringing what he calls the same digital-first approach, deployment of rigorous KPIs for managers, and relentless team building to both agencies that he marshaled with such success in his previous life.<\/p>\n

But the spotlight is now trained big-time on how he handles the coming tax season that promises a never before seen deluge of cash refunds, and big changes in the code that will make returns far more complicated than usual to process. Trump and Bessent keep proclaiming that the One Big Beautiful Bill means big cash back to taxpayers, and they realize that if the IRS screws up by delaying the bounty or shortchanging taxpayers by mistake, they\u2019ll lose a lot of the goodwill they see coming their way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bisignano\u2019s quick work at the SSA confounded even Elizabeth Warren, and points to major improvements at the IRS\u00a0<\/strong> <\/h2>\n

Prior to Bisignano\u2019s arrival, from December of 2023 until the current leader\u2019s Senate confirmation of May 6, a parade of four SSA commissioners and acting commissioners cycled through the position. These chiefs departed fast in part because they got frequent hammerings in Congress over the agency\u2019s poor phone and face-to-face service to beneficiaries. The list of metrics that have improved over his short tenure are impressive. First, the site is now running around the clock (previously it was down 29 hours a week or 17% of the time). Phone wait times have shrunk dramatically: In June of last year the average time on hold before speaking to an agent was 20 minutes, that shrunk to an all-time low of seven minutes in September. Meanwhile, the SSA phone service handled 68 million callers in fiscal year 2025, 67% more than in FY 2024. Bisignano maintained application and appeals processing during the government shutdown and offered overtime to work the days around Christmas, which are federal holidays; 66% of staff showed up. In another win, the commissioner orchestrated new workflows that reduced the time for processing disability claims from 240 to 209 days, and curbed the backlog to 865,000 from 1.26 million. <\/p>\n

According to an SSA press release, at a meeting with Bisignano in July, Sen. Elizabeth Warren \u201cexpressed disbelief about the data\u201d provided by the commissioner and his staff showing a quick, substantial reduction in wait times for callers on the national SSA 800 number. The legislator and commissioner agreed to an audit of the reported stats by the Office of the Inspector General. In a report published on Dec. 22, the OIG backed Bisignano, concluding: \u201cThe SSA\u2019s publicly reported metrics were accurate, and its overall telephone performance improved during FY 2025.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bisignano rose as a \u201cfixer\u201d for Sandy Weill, Jamie Dimon, and Henry Kravis<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The grandson of Italian immigrants, Bisignano attended Baker University, a liberal arts school in Kansas, where he won trophies as a nationally ranked bowler. In 1994, he got his first big break when Dimon hired him at Travelers<\/a> to run securities operations at its Smith Barney unit. He captained a strutting softball team of Italian Americans who dubbed themselves \u201cthe Paisanos\u201d and sported floppy hats, like those of pizza-makers, on the field. As Dimon and Weill rolled up the acquisitions en route to forming what would eventually tower as Citigroup, Bisignano\u2019s role in IT grew, and by mid-2001, he was managing 16,000 workers in lower Manhattan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the Twin Towers burned on 9\/11, Bisignano rushed to the street, megaphone in hand, and roared, \u201cWalk north!\u201d He then led a parade of thousands of Citi workers to an operations center near Penn Station, and kept the bank\u2019s computers whirring during the weeks of chaos that followed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2002 Bisignano took charge at a Citi backwater called Global Transactions Services that was then losing $3 billion a year. He reinvented GTS as a venue where multinationals could outsource forex services and accounting; just three years later, the franchise was generating over $1 billion in profit, and remains a major moneymaker for Citi to this day. In late 2005, the newly arrived Dimon lured Bisignano to JPMorgan as chief administrative officer, then enlisted this seasoned crisis manager to repair the foreclosure-laden mortgage portfolio at the former Washington Mutual, the subprime lender that JPM salvaged at the government\u2019s behest during the Global Financial Crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bisignano jetted daily to California on the WaMu assignment, then headed back to New York each night to receive chemotherapy for throat cancer he believes may have resulted from inhaling toxic soot on 9\/11. His trademark gravelly voice is a legacy of the surgery that made him a survivor. Bisignano also got Dimon\u2019s nod to integrate another casualty, Bear Stearns, into the JPM fold. The deal cost $250 million, and for that price, JPM got all of Bear\u2019s operations, plus the new, ultra-fancy, 47-story headquarters that cost $1.1 billion to build, and where the JPM brass decamped for years during the construction of their new hub on Park Avenue.<\/p>\n

In 2013 KKR<\/a> cofounder Henry Kravis, and then top manager and now co-CEO Scott Nuttall, recruited Bisignano to repair arguably the worst big investment the private equity giant ever made, stricken credit card payments processor First Data. Bisignano transformed the \u201cdumb bricks\u201d that only swiped cards into countertop terminals-cum-computers branded Clover, boasting analytical tools that helped manage inventories and inform managers which waiters were selling the priciest bottles of wine, and reminding them to offer the same vintages when the connoisseurs that ordered those labels last time returned. In 2019 Bisignano sold First Data to Fiserv, creating a giant generating over $20 billion a year in revenue that owns 6 million terminals worldwide and processes 44% of America\u2019s credit card payments. Next came the calls from Trump who, along with Bessent, viewed the challenges at the SSA and IRS as right in the wheelhouse of the manager who\u2019d been a top architect in building two of the nation\u2019s leading banks, and led a pair of the biggest players in expediting the cashless economy. <\/p>\n

The 2025 tax season will prove a crucial test for Bisignano\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Before Bisignano took charge, the IRS went through an incredible five \u201cacting commissioners,\u201d starting at Trump\u2019s inauguration, turnover that outspins even the revolving door at SSA. The president himself devised a solution to put a steady hand on the wobbling controls. Trump first named Bessent as acting commissioner and shortly thereafter created the new position of CEO, tapping Bisignano. The title clearly signaled that Bisignano would run the day-to-day business at IRS. \u201cScott loved the CEO idea,\u201d declares Bisignano.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be the most important tax season ever,\u201d observes the new CEO, and Trump and Bessent have been echoing that sentiment, with the POTUS recently declaring that we\u2019re headed for \u201cthe biggest tax season of all time!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trump and Bessent are trumpeting that far more Americans should get refunds this year than last, and that they\u2019ll be big. In Bessent\u2019s words, this will be \u201ca gigantic refund year.\u201d In recent interviews, he has estimated that the average wage earner will receive around $1,000 more in 2025, and that, in total, the IRS will return around $150 billion more than in 2024 (that\u2019s 45% over last year). His numbers also imply that approximately 150 million Americans would get refunds this year versus 104 million in 2024.<\/p>\n

What makes this year (based on 2025 tax returns) such a bountiful season for cash back from the IRS? The reason is twofold. First, the OBBB Act hatched half a dozen new tax benefits. It created deductions of up to $25,000 on tips, and to a max of $12,500 on overtime pay. Purchasers of new cars assembled in the U.S. who take out car loans get to write off $10,000 in interest. Seniors age 65 and older win an additional deduction of $6,000. The cap on deductions for state and local taxes rises from $10,000 to $40,000. The standard deduction increases by $750 to $31,500, and the child credit waxes from $2,000 to $2,200. Attached to all the new provisions are phaseouts that begin at different income levels. The IRS will also issue the new Form 4547, which implements the \u201cTrump Accounts,\u201d the tax-advantaged savings vehicles for children established by the OBBB. <\/p>\n

Second, though Trump signed the OBBB on July 4, the breaks apply for all of 2025. But the legislation left in place the withholding schedule from 2024. Hence, Americans have been effectively sending an extra portion of their paychecks to the IRS that they\u2019ll soon recoup.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bisignano stresses that it\u2019s IT, not the scale of personnel, at both the SSA and IRS that will bring better, and faster, customer service, and at the latter, improve not just the likes of timely refunds but collections. President Biden famously installed a plan to raise the IRS\u2019s rightful take by hiring 87,000 new agents. Bisignano says that under Trump, it didn\u2019t happen. \u201cWe have a system that ensures that we collect as much as humanly possible that\u2019s appropriate,\u201d says Bisignano. \u201cWe have the smallest IRS we\u2019ve ever had. Our capital is technology and people. They work hand in hand; technology guides you to best deploy your people. The answer to all these organizations is technology, it\u2019s not counting the heads. Investing in IT is the best route to enhanced servicing, and with the advent of AI, we\u2019ll see tremendous advancements over the next two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new CEO avows that he\u2019s installing many of the same disciplines used by Weill and Dimon. \u201cWe do the weekly reviews at both the IRS and SSA,\u201d he relates. \u201cWe convene senior managers, and we have an hour and a half meeting, and they have to go through the KPIs for the week. We do what we always did going back to the Sandy Weill and Jamie Dimon days.\u201d The CEO adds that once a month, he convenes an all-day leadership meeting where \u201cwe beat the hell out of the place to make it better.\u201d He says that no such confabs existed before his arrival, and that communication among the top brass was minimal.<\/p>\n

The kind of team-building he learned from his heroes also looms large. \u201cBefore I came to IRS, there was always confusion about who was in charge,\u201d he says. \u201cThe way Jamie and Sandy ran it, and the way Henry Kravis and Scott Nuttall ran it, it\u2019s one team with one set of objectives and one set of metrics. One team, one dream. We have an HR department to give people the tools they need to deliver the goods, not, for example, to [just] have an HR department.\u201d He\u2019s determined to level the silos, and says he\u2019s already shrunk layers of management at the IRS from as many as 11 or 12, to five or six, giving the CEO far more access to the managers running everything from criminal investigations to arranging the new withholding schedules for 2026.<\/p>\n

For now, Bisignano says he\u2019s \u201cmaniacally focused on delivering a great season,\u201d and that a key metric will be the timeliness of the refunds. He\u2019ll then pivot to what he calls a \u201cnine prong\u201d plan to reengineer the IRS organization by 2027. Meanwhile, believe it or not, he\u2019s getting guidance from the departed IRS commissioners. Bisignano relates that he ran into an ex-chief who informed him that he and six other former commissioners and acting commissioners had a chat group: \u201cI looked at what they were saying about my appointment in the chat group, and it was things like, \u2018This is the real deal.\u2019\u201d He relates that one member remarked online, \u201cHow can he do both jobs?\u201d and another responded, \u201cI looked him up. It looks like he\u2019s done it before!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

So Bisignano invited all seven of his predecessors in the chat group to dinner in Washington, and the conversation raised his spirits. \u201cThey were saying that this is the best thing they\u2019d seen and that a real guy was running the joint,\u201d he reports. The execs had seen firsthand what was wrong, and recognized that the IRS\u2019s first CEO is richly equipped to deliver the fix.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Shawn Tully<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank Bisignano\u2019s cell phone lit up, and he recognized the caller. The president was on the line. On this morning in early October, the newly confirmed Social Security commissioner was seated in his 40th floor office in Manhattan\u2019s Tribeca that features a sweeping view of the lower East Side and on to Brooklyn, where he<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":889178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[673,2289],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-889177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-first","8":"category-jamie"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}