Frank Bisignano wants to run the Internal Revenue Service like an efficient private company – and this week he hired Jamie Dimon’s private banker to help him do just that, On The Money has learned.
Vince La Padula has spent the past 23 years at JPMorgan running something called the “workplace solutions” business in the big bank’s wealth management arm. Now, he’s joining Uncle Sam’s tax collection agency as Bisignano’s No. 2.
La Padula’s resume includes stints in New York City government under Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg. At JPM, he was also the bank’s point man on Ukraine and its efforts to build a post-war economy.
But La Padula was also, in a sense, Dimon’s own personal banker, handling his estate planning and investment needs as a key lieutenant of Mary Erdoes, the head of JPM’s asset and wealth management division.
Starting next week, he will take a still-undefined senior role at the IRS, essentially serving as Bisignano’s No. 2, an interesting move for the nation’s largest and most prestigious bank to a notoriously bureaucratic (and much hated) government agency.
The Trump White House is looking to change all of that, I am told. The goal is to remake the IRS from an obnoxious tax collector and issuer of dreaded audits to something more taxpayer friendly.
That’s where Bisignano comes in. A longtime corporate CEO and himself a former JPM top executive, he was hired by president Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as the IRS’s first “chief executive officer,” a title worth noting. In the past, the IRS was run by commissioners, mainly bean-counting political types appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Bisignano was brought in to run the IRS like a business that takes in money and, more importantly, provides refunds to taxpayers in an efficient manner.
And that’s also where La Padula comes in, I am told. La Padula provided no comment to On The Money but people close to him tell me the two are longtime friends and colleagues. Plus his transition from banker to bureaucrat – given that the bureaucracy is exactly what is being eyed for slimming – should be pretty seamless.
La Padula’s job as head of JPM’s workplace solutions group was to deal with major companies and provide technology to manage their various HR functions – from compensation to 401(k) to stock options – and run them efficiently.
The IRS collects around $6 trillion in taxes each year. Because of the tax cuts and incentives in President Trump’s “Big Beautiful” budget bill, refunds this year have skyrocketed. The IRS under DOGE has cut its staffing levels to around 75,000 from 100,000 at the start of the administration, which means it needs La Padula’s operational and technical expertise to keep the trains running on time.
I am told Dimon held a going-away party for La Padula earlier this week at the so-called “Patriot Bar,” the reception area on the top floor of the bank’s swanky headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. About 200 people attended, including clients and friends like former New York Mercantile Exchange chairman Vincent Viola (he’s also the founder of the high-speed trading firm Virtu and the owner of the NHL’s Florida Panthers), Robert and Jonathan Kraft of the New England Patriots, and Big Apple Group CEO John Catsimatidis. Bisignano attended as well.
Dimon addressed the crowd and said La Padula would always be welcomed back to the bank. xxx It’s easy to see why.
Credit: Source link
