Tax refunds in the U.S. jumped 17 percent week over week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.
Mnuchin didn’t provide further data or clarify which week he was speaking about, though
“That basically gets us to the same level as last year,” Mnuchin said during a CNBC interview in London. “I would just emphasize that even if people have perfectly done their withholding, people really should be focused on paying lower taxes and those lower taxes are money back into the economy and that’s why we have the economic growth that we do.”
A Treasury spokeswoman said Mnuchin was referring to a rise in the average size of tax refunds for the week ended Feb. 15. An IRS spokesman didn’t immediately respond.
The IRS’s full weekly tax filing data is scheduled to be released Friday in Washington.
Mnuchin has tried to explain early data and anecdotal evidence that refunds over the first weeks of the tax filing season are lower. Less wealthy people — whose taxes are less complicated and are more eager for a refund — tend to file the earliest tax returns.
The drop in the number and amount of refunds so far has irritated taxpayers and triggered new Democratic complaints about President Donald Trump’s new tax law.
Data for the seven days through Feb. 15 showed that direct-deposit refunds dropped for the third week in a row this filing season to $2,703, from $3,256 a year earlier. The total number of refunds was down 26.5 percent to 23.5 million, the IRS said last week.
— With assistance from Laura Davison
