Earlier this month the Senate confirmed Charles P. Rettig as the 49^th Commissioner of the IRS. Rettig was managing principal of the Beverly Hills law firm, Hochman, Salkin, Rettig, Toscher & Perez, a firm specializing in high profile tax controversy cases. The biggest challenges he’ll face as commissioner are the same ones that have existed for years, namely improving the effectiveness of an agency that doesn’t get the funding it really wants or needs, improving public perception & confidence, and now implementing a whole host of new tax laws. Rettig has spent basically his entire career with the same law firm and his peers definitely think highly of him.

With each new commissioner, the question that always comes to mind for me is, will he be sympathetic to the common taxpayer? I am definitely encouraged by the fact that he has real hands-on experience representing taxpayers seeking tax relief and going up against the agency that he now runs. Also, he’s a California attorney, so he is intimately familiar with the unique struggles of local people like our own clients. I’m sure many of his clients are from the Los Angeles area, but there’s no reason to think he has not also assisted taxpayers in Northern California towns like Sacramento, Modesto, or Fresno. The commissioner is usually someone with vast amounts of experience in administration, but limited knowledge of taxes. However, Rettig is well versed in all aspects of tax controversy, including (according to the practice areas listed on his firm’s website) audits, appeals, offshore accounts, penalty abatement – surely almost anything related to IRS collections. We don’t know if Rettig will be that champion of taxpayer rights that we always hope for; he actually seems middle-of-the-road politically. But he at least knows the point of view of the taxpayer and knows from experience what it means to go face-to-face with the IRS. In my book, that’s a fantastic start.

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