Roughly $150 Billion of Rebates Have Gone Out to Taxpayers So Far This Week
Posted on April 16, 2020 The Treasury Department today reported that a large amount of recovery rebates, considered tax refunds, have gone out to taxpayers this week: roughly $150 billion. Those are amounts that were direct deposited into individual’s bank accounts. Some more direct deposits and all amounts in check form are still to come. […]
Withholding Growth Continues to Drop With More Likely to Come
Posted on April 14, 2020 Summary Tax withholding growth continues to drop. In the first half of April, we measure withholding growth, which is a proxy measure for economywide wages, to have fallen to just 1 percent year-over-year, a drop of about 5 percentage points in just a month and a half. A decline of […]
A Lot of Tax Refunds are Still Waiting to Be Claimed as Filing Season Activity Slows Markedly
Posted on April 10, 2020 The filing and processing of personal tax returns has slowed markedly in the past couple of weeks. That is an expected result of the nationwide efforts to contain the novel coronavirus and the IRS extension of the tax filing and associated payment deadline to July 15. But there are still […]
A Decline in Corporate Income Tax Receipts in March Was Presumably Just the Start of More Significant Declines
Posted on April 5, 2020 Summary Gross corporate income tax receipts fell by an estimated 9 percent in March (compared to last March’s amount), the first decline since August of last year. March is not one of the big four months for corporate income tax receipts, so we don’t normally put a lot of emphasis […]
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 […]
Tax Withholding Growth through February: No Evidence of Economic Slowdown
Posted on February 28, 2020 Tax withholding growth in February looks to be just about back to the steady, solid pace of most of the second half of last year. After being slightly elevated in December and especially so in January, withholding growth in February reverted most of the way back to the narrow band […]
A Substantial NIPA Wage Revision for 2019 Looks Very Unlikely
Posted on February 24, 2020 Alright, this may be a bit in the weeds—perhaps well into the weeds—but I see no evidence from available data that the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) this summer will be substantially revising overall wages and salaries for 2019 as measured in the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs). That […]
Withholding Growth in the First Half of February: Returning Toward Pre-December Amounts
Posted on February 19, 2020 Not surprisingly, federal collections from tax withholding—that is, amounts withheld from paychecks and remitted to the Treasury Department for income and payroll taxes—have been growing more slowly in the first half of February compared to the elevated amounts of growth recorded in December and January. Withholding growth in recent days […]
Early Tax Filing Season Data: Overall Refunds Yet Again Drop to Start the Filing Season
Posted on February 14, 2020. Although it is way too early in the 2020 income tax filing season–which began at the end of January–to say much about tax refunds, we can say that the early IRS data releases show a continuation of the trend in recent years for taxpayers to receive refunds later and later. […]
January Employment Report: Recent Decline in Total Wage Growth, Inconsistent with Withholding Data
Posted on February 7, 2020 The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in its January employment report that nonfarm payroll jobs increased by 225,000 in January from the amount in December, and the unemployment rate inched up 0.1 percentage points to 3.6 percent, still a historically low rate. The increase in jobs in January was well […]
January Withholding: Pickup in Growth
Posted on January 31, 2020 Hello and welcome. This is the inaugural post on the taxtracking.com blog. Let’s jump right in. I have been surprised by recent withholding data—far from the first time and certainly not the last. In short, withholding growth appears to have accelerated in December and January from growth in previous months. […]