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Tax experts who have served in Republican and Democratic administrations said audit decisions are made not by political appointees at the IRS but by career employees.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday alleged that the Biden administration “rushed” an IRS audit of him after he was nominated, suggesting that the former administration ordered a politically motivated income tax review.
On the social media platform X, President Donald Trump’s defense chief posted an image of what appears to be a notice from the IRS to Hegseth and his wife, notifying them that their federal tax return was being audited and they owed a balance of $33,558.
“Total sham,” he wrote. “The party of ‘norms’ and ‘decency’ strikes again. We will never back down.”
This is not the first time the Trump administration has accused its predecessor of playing politics with government agencies’ core functions. Trump has railed against what he perceived as politically motivated investigations by the Justice Department launched during the Biden administration, including into his alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left office. Since reentering the White House in January, his appointees have removed prosecutors linked to the probes.
Hegseth did not offer any evidence that the alleged IRS scrutiny of his taxes was politically motivated.
He earned nearly $6 million in the two years before becoming defense secretary as a Fox News host, and through speaking fees and book deals, according to his financial disclosure form.
Tax experts who have served in Republican and Democratic administrations said audit decisions are made not by political appointees at the IRS but by career employees.
“The selection process is fenced off from the political appointees,” said Nina Olson, executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, and for 18 years the national taxpayer advocate at the IRS – the agency official who advocates on behalf of taxpayers – who left in 2019.
There are only two Senate-confirmed political appointees at the IRS: the commissioner and the chief counsel. They do not, as a matter of practice, get involved in decisions about whom to audit, she said.
The tax code makes it a crime for White House officials to request an audit of a particular taxpayer or interfere with an ongoing audit, experts noted.
The Pentagon and the IRS did not respond to requests from The Washington Post seeking clarity on Hegseth’s social media post.
The image posted does not show a date. In general, experts said, the taxpayer is notified in advance that an audit is being conducted. Depending on the complexity of the individual’s finances, it could take months to select a return for an audit, experts said.
Hegseth has been among Trump’s most divisive appointees, with questions raised about his fitness to lead an organization with a budget of $850 billion. His confirmation process was marked, among other things, by allegations of financial mismanagement at two small nonprofit organizations he led. He said that he was “extremely proud” of the work he did and that “every dollar’” raised was used to support warfighters.
In general, nominees are vetted “in depth,” said Mark Mazur, who served as assistant secretary for tax policy in the Obama administration and was an IRS official in the George W. Bush administration. He said that if in fact Hegseth was at risk of owing back taxes, that should have come out during the vetting process.
Background checks for Trump’s nominees started later than normal because of delays by the transition team in signing agreements with the outgoing administration.
“In all my years, I’ve never seen the IRS pursue an individual for political purposes,” said Steve Rosenthal, a former senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, a D.C.-based think tank. That assessment, he said, extends to the random audits of former FBI director James B. Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, for returns filed during the first Trump term. Both drew Trump’s ire over what he perceived as a lack of loyalty and their roles overseeing various aspects of the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. They were both fired by Trump.
The IRS, contacted by the New York Times, said the commissioner at the time was not involved in selecting the individuals to be audited. The selections were made by career civil servants, the agency said, and an IRS watchdog later found no misconduct.
“It’s a remarkable coincidence,” Rosenthal said, “but I believe the IRS.”
Aaron Schaffer, Alice Crites, Liz Goodwin, Dan Lamothe and Jeffrey Stein contributed to this report.
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