The "No Matter What Trump Does" Department

There's a batch of articles in the mainstream media today reporting about widespread anger across the country because the average tax refunds during the first week of refunds was a bit smaller than it was last year.  The taxpayers are blaming President Trump and his tax cuts for this phenomenon.  These stories are bizarre for a simple reason.  When the tax cuts went into effect at the beginning of 2018, the IRS changed the withholding tables.  That meant that each week employees got to take home substantially more money than had been the case in 2017 for the same pay.  The result was that when it came to the end of the year, there was much less withheld by the government, so refunds are smaller.

Let's put numbers into an example:  Let's say an individual made $1000 per week.  In 2017, that person took home $900 per week.  That came to a total of $46,800 in take home pay.  Then, when the person filed a tax return, he or she got a tax refund of $1100. That meant total earnings after taxes of 47,900 dollars for the year.  In 2018, under the new withholding tables, that same person got $940 per week in take home pay.  That comes to a total of $48,880 in take home pay.  Then when filing taxes for 2018 the person got a refund of $600.  That meant total earnings after taxes of $49,480 or an additional $1580 more than was the case in 2017.  No one who understood this would complain about a smaller refund, because the total was still much larger.