Withholding Growth Drops Significantly in March
Posted on March 31, 2020 Summary Withholding growth in March dropped significantly, consistent with the economy currently being in recession. We’re in the week-long period that occurs each month in which we cannot get reliable measures of withholding growth because of calendar effects. When we start measuring withholding growth again next week, we’ll be adjusting […]
Effects of Enacted Delays in Remittances of Employer Social Security Taxes
Posted on March 29, 2020 Policymakers in recent days have enacted a number of tax policy changes to quickly get funds to businesses and individuals as emergency relief from the effects of containing the spread of the novel coronavirus. The most significant legislation is the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (“CARES”) Act. I’ll focus […]
Growth in Withholding Receipts Dropping Significantly in March
Posted on March 24, 2020 We’re getting data on growth in tax amounts withheld from employees’ paychecks in the second half of March that confirms what we saw in the first half of the month: withholding growth has dropped off significantly this month. That is a clear recession indicator, and it may just be the […]
Early Indicator of Economic Disruption: Growth in Withholding Taxes is Starting to Slow
Published on March 14, 2020 First, stay safe and healthy. Second, we are probably already seeing the effects on federal withholding tax collections from the sweeping economic disruptions caused by the efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus. In the first half of March, growth in those daily amounts withheld from paychecks averaged about […]
Tax Refunds Through Week 6: Just a Little Weaker Than Last Year at This Point
Published on March 13, 2020 Although the widespread effects of the coronavirus pandemic are certainly of much more importance–and I plan to post shortly on the weakening withholding tax data as an early indicator of the economywide effects–I do want to comment on yesterday’s IRS release of data on individual tax refunds through filing season […]
Individual Tax Refunds Are Looking Weak, But It’s Only Partway Through the Filing Season
Posted on March 2, 2020 The IRS has released data on tax refunds through week four of the filing season, and the dollar amount of refunds is down 3.4 percent from last year’s amount at this same point There are certainly signs that refund growth could be very low this year, or perhaps refunds could […]