President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have been boasting that Americans received large tax refunds this year due to the “One Big Beautiful Bill” the GOP passed last year.
“This is a tax season unlike any other because three big things are happening: lower taxes, bigger refunds, and more money in the pockets of hardworking Americans,” House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote Thursday morning in a post on X. “Thanks to Republicans’ Working Families Tax Cuts, Americans’ tax rates are reduced permanently.”
However, this year’s tax refunds were actually far smaller than expected, according to an analysis from Heather Long, the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.
“The White House (and many economists) expected $700 to $1,000 higher refunds, on average,” Long wrote in a post on X, adding that “the reality is closer to $375” for members of her credit union.
The IRS’s own data shows a slightly smaller average refund increase of $346.
What’s more, rising costs elsewhere have eaten into whatever additional refunds Americans received, making for a net loss in most cases.
For example, the One Big Beautiful Bill slashed health care subsidies that millions of Americans used to afford their Affordable Care Act health insurance plans. In many instances, insurance costs more than doubled.
And Trump’s idiotic and illegal tariffs and boondoggle of a war in Iran have raised the price of goods and gasoline, additional costs that eat into whatever refund Americans may have gotten.
“So far, the refunds aren’t coming in as high as expected,” Long wrote in a post on her Substack. “Yes, the refunds are up. Yes, this is likely to be the largest tax refund season ever. But there’s a difference between a $1,000 boost to the typical American household’s income and a $375 boost. It means less spending. It means less of a growth boost. And that’s before factoring in higher gas prices eating up a lot of the tax refund.”
Republicans are banking on the One Big Beautiful Bill law—which they are ridiculously now trying to rebrand as the “Working Families Tax Cut Bill”—to carry them to victory in November’s midterms.
However, even as tax season has now come and gone, the law remains overwhelmingly unpopular. A Navigator Research poll released on Tuesday found that just 36% of registered voters view the tax law favorably.
“By a 20-point margin, more Americans believe the law does not benefit the middle class (48%) than those who say it lowers taxes for everyone for all Americans (28%),” Julie Alderman Boudreau, Navigator’s director of research and program operations, wrote in a polling memo.
And a poll released by Fox News released ahead of Tax Day found that 70% of voters think their taxes are too high. That’s an 11-percentage-point increase from a year ago.
All of that combined makes it unlikely that this crap sandwich of a tax law will help Republicans’ dismal chances in this year’s midterm elections.
Published with permission of Daily Kos
