U.S. Treasury’s Kenneth Kies Gives Keynote Speech at 2026 Tax Conference
January 08, 2026
The D.C. Bar successfully held its 10th annual Tax Conference on January 7–8, drawing more than 600 attendees on the first day that included a keynote address by Kenneth Kies, assistant secretary for tax policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
During his 30-minute address, Kies said the current administration is delivering on President Trump’s promises in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), saying that the act “will benefit millions of hardworking Americans” based upon projections by the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis.
“Working families should expect appreciably larger tax refunds this year compared to last year,” Kies said.
The Tax Foundation estimates that the OBBB reduced individual income taxes by $144 billion in 2025. According to Kies, approximately “133 million families will receive an average tax cut of $936 from the president’s new tax provision.”
“We also estimate that 94 percent of middle-income families will receive a tax cut from these provisions,” he continued.
Kies said that the IRS expects to receive more than 162 million tax returns this year, more than 104 million of which will be requesting a refund, for an estimated $400 billion in tax refunds in 2026.
In addition to forecasting refunds for U.S. taxpayers, Kies noted that the IRS is working diligently to take down tax cheats and tax criminals. He claimed that the IRS Criminal Division “is more focused than ever with 64 percent of investigative time spent solely on tax crimes.” Kies cited the case of Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, who received a 28-year prison sentence for his role in a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme involving the Minnesota-based nonprofit Feeding Our Future.
“We’re engaged in a lot of enforcement activity, which goes to FinCEN [Financial Crimes Enforcement Network] at the Treasury [Department],” said Kies. “What we are focusing on now is how do we take what we’re doing in Minnesota and probably move it to other states [where we are] almost certain that the same activities are going on.”
Other successful litigation cited by Kies included TD Bank’s October 2024 guilty plea to conspiracy to commit money laundering and Bank Secrecy Act violations, resulting in a penalty of more than $1.8 billion, as well as the historic $750 million tax fraud settlement from the estate of billionaire software entrepreneur Robert Brockman.
Kies made a point to counter what he called “fake news” about the IRS being unprepared for tax-filing season. “Not only are we prepared for the filing season, [but] we are prepared to address significant tax evasions and/or other crimes,” Kies said.
For another example of tax crime, Kies mentioned conservation easements on which a property owner gives an estate, or parts of it, to another entity to be set aside for conservation purposes, while retaining technical ownership.
“Federal law absolutely approves people making contributions to conservation easements as charitable gifts, which [are] basically what the value of what’s been given away,” Kies explained. “There are many taxpayers who have done this in a perfectly legal manner. However, some have pushed far past the law. Unscrupulous promoters have sold investors — many unsuspecting — on a ‘literally too good to be true’ scheme involving conversation easements and [on] a related structure called ‘Historic Preservation Easements.’”
Kies argued that many promotors are cheating their investors and breaking the law. “Some organizers have already gone to prison for their actions,” he said, “[and] they have, for their actions, been ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution. The bad actions of some have flooded the courts with literally hundreds of cases.”
“We are planning to issue an information piece that summarizes the results of the IRS in these cases because we think the investors may not necessarily understand how much peril they’re in, in terms of litigating,” he added.
Toward the end of his remarks, Kies reiterated his optimism about the work of the Treasury Department and the IRS, saying that they will issue more guidance on the OBBB in time for taxpayers to file their 2025 taxes.
