Donald Korb, who was chief counsel of the IRS during the George W. Bush administration, was nominated by President Donald Trump to once again hold the top legal position at the tax agency, according to published reports.
Korb, who is currently a partner at law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, would need to be confirmed by the Senate in order to fill the role at the IRS, as the chief counsel and commissioner positions at the agency are two that need Senate confirmation. Billy Long, Trump’s choice for commissioner of the agency, has yet to appear before the Senate for his nomination proceedings.
The IRS has been without a top lawyer since Marjorie Rollinson—sworn in as the 49th chief counsel in the IRS’s history in May 2024 and the first woman to permanently hold that spot—retired in January.
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William Paul, who took over as acting chief counsel of the IRS after Rollinson’s retirement, was removed from that position in March and replaced by another IRS attorney, Andrew De Mello, who was nominated by Trump during his first term in the White House to be inspector general of the Education Department but wasn’t confirmed.
According to the Associated Press, Paul was demoted from his position because he clashed with the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency’s alleged push to gain access to sensitive tax databases. Paul said in an internal meeting on March 13 that he was being reassigned because allies of Musk viewed him as being uncooperative, Bloomberg Tax reported.
The chief counsel serves as the top legal advisor to the IRS commissioner, the Treasury Department, and taxpayers.
If Korb is confirmed and sworn in as chief counsel, he would join an agency that has seen several top leaders, including its last commissioner and three acting commissioners, leave—either voluntarily or involuntarily—since Trump took office in January. The IRS is also in the process of slashing its workforce as part of the Trump administration’s plan to cut wasteful spending and downsize the federal government.
A tax controversy specialist, Korb served as IRS chief counsel from 2004 to 2008, supervising approximately 1,500 attorneys who were assigned to the IRS national office and among the major operational divisions of the agency. He played a prominent role in increasing the effectiveness of the Chief Counsel’s Office and is best known for developing the litigation strategy that the government used in successfully litigating tax shelter cases during his almost five-year tenure, according to his bio.
“Among the individual matters with which he was personally involved while Chief Counsel was serving as the lead negotiator in resolving a landmark transfer pricing dispute. As part of the settlement, the taxpayer made the largest single payment ever made to the IRS to resolve a tax dispute,” his bio states.
Prior to becoming IRS chief counsel, Korb spent more than two years as an assistant to the IRS commissioner in the mid-1980s, when he was a top coordinator of the IRS’s involvement in the legislative process that resulted in the enactment of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, and four years as an attorney advisor in the IRS Chief Counsel’s Office.
He joined Sullivan & Cromwell in 2009.
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