Trump's inside-the-box pick to run tax at Treasury

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for his point man on tax at the Treasury Department is an experienced insider whose nomination signals business will have a strong ally in the administration as it pushes through major tax legislation.

Ken Kies, a leading tax lobbyist who has advocated for big corporations such as Microsoft and Hess, is widely seen as extremely knowledgeable about both the tax code and the ways of Washington, though he has also developed a reputation among some for sharp elbows and a prickly, suffer-no-fools personality.

If confirmed to be assistant secretary for tax policy, Kies would have a big voice in the fight over Republicans’ expiring tax cuts, not to mention a panoply of regulatory issues — from the fate of Democrats’ “Direct File” initiative at the IRS to the shape of their corporate minimum tax.

He would also make up one-half of an odd couple with Billy Long, the folksy former Missouri member of Congress Trump named to head the IRS despite having little experience with tax policy.

The Kies pick is a clear sign the Treasury will be much friendlier to businesses than during the Biden years, when the department was led by a number of academics who pushed for higher taxes on businesses and high earners.

Democrats will surely decry Kies’ career helping businesses reduce their tax bills when his nomination comes before the Senate Finance Committee. Kies has lobbied for a long list of businesses, including, recently, the cruise line industry, real estate investment trusts and insurance companies, among others.

A fixture in Washington’s tax world since the 1980s, Kies’ experience may give him especially broad influence given that Trump’s pick to run Treasury, Scott Bessent, is not steeped in the intricacies of the code, and neither are many congressional Republicans, many of whom weren't even in office when the GOP put its 2017 tax cuts into place.

Kies declined to comment.

Before starting his own lobbying shop that he later sold, Kies headed the Joint Committee on Taxation — Congress' nonpartisan tax accountants — in the late 1990s. Before that, he was Republicans’ chief counsel for the House Ways and Means Committee, including when lawmakers passed a seminal overhaul of the code in 1986.