The Senate voted 56-41 on February 29 to confirm President Biden’s nomination of Marjorie Rollinson to serve as chief counsel for the Internal Revenue Service. Rollinson picked up support from 6 Republicans—Finance Committee members Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, as well as non-taxwriters Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, and Mike Rounds of South Dakota—who joined 48 Democrats and 2 Independents who receive their committee assignments from that party in the “aye” column.
Rollinson, who is coming out of retirement to take the position, spent much of the past 36 years at a Big Four professional services firm, most recently as deputy director of its national tax department. However, she also served in the IRS chief counsel’s office from 2013 to 2019, finishing her time there as associate chief counsel, international.
First confirmed chief counsel since 2021
The chief counsel is one of only two positions at the IRS that require Senate confirmation—the other is the commissioner—and plays a key role in developing guidance and regulations on enacted tax legislation. The position had been vacant since President Biden took office in January of 2021, with William Paul, the current principal deputy chief counsel, serving as acting chief counsel in the interim.
Rollinson was tapped for the post in June of 2023. At her nomination hearing before the Senate Finance Committee in September, she faced questions on a host of issues including the OECD project to overhaul international tax rules, the interpretation of the tax provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (P.L. 117-169) and the guidance implementing those provisions, and the IRS’s focus for taxpayer audits. (For details, see Tax News & Views, Vol. 24, No. 32, Sep. 29, 2023. The committee subsequently released Rollinson’s written responses to additional questions for the record that taxwriters submitted after that hearing.)
Finance Committee members voted on a bipartisan basis last November to send Rollinson’s nomination to the full Senate, but she did not receive a floor vote before the first session of the 118th Congress expired at the end of 2023. The taxwriting panel revisited her nomination once the current legislative session got underway at the start of 2024 and endorsed her a second time—again by a bipartisan margin—on January 31.
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