Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) on Thursday told Hill.TV that tax refunds are down because the economy is not benefitting the average American.
“When you look at it now, we look at the number of individuals who aren’t working, they’re not bringing as much money in,” Beatty, who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, told hosts Krystal Ball and Shermichael Singleton on “Rising.”
Early data released from the IRS this week showed that taxpayers were receiving lower tax refunds this year.
The report for the week ending Feb. 1 showed that refunds were 8.4 percent lower than last year.
Beatty pointed specifically to stagnation, unemployment, and women making less on the dollar.
“When you put all those things into the structure of it, it’s corporate America [which] [is] making more,” she said. “They have more dollars to get more returns on. The everyday person doesn’t have that.”
“When you think about the workforce, and you think about 60 percent of the people don’t even have a thousand dollars at the end of the month,” she said.” When you think about where we are with the economy, I think there are a lot of disparities, and at the end of the day, the dollars aren’t there for them to get on their returns as they thought they would have.”
Lower refunds could have negative implications for President Trump and Republicans, who have boasted about their new tax policy.
The Treasury Department responded to the report, urging Americans not to read too much into coverage of the initial report.
“News reports on reduction in IRS filings & refunds are misleading,” the department tweeted. “Refunds are consistent with 2017 levels and down slightly from 2018 based on a small initial sample from only a few days of data.”
— Julia Manchester
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