A few weeks ago, Democrats including Senator Kamala Harris were saying that a decline in tax refunds showed that the Republican tax bill had failed the middle class. Among the many reasons that this was a dumb argument was that it relied on data from early in the tax season.
It’s a little later now, and according to Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin the trend has changed: “Tax refunds are up 17 percent week over week. That basically gets us to the same level as last year.”
That doesn’t really tell us anything about the wisdom of the tax legislation. It does confirm the vacuity of Harris’s attack on it.
Update: And here’s the IRS, noting that so far the average refund is slightly higher than last year.
Update II: Just this morning, the Democrats running the House Ways and Means Committee were spreading the old line.