Feb 25, 2025
Tax filing season is underway and the IRS has already begun issuing tax refunds. In fact, the Internal Revenue Service published some recent statistics on January 31, 2025 detailing both how many returns had been processed and how many refunds had been sent so far.
A quick look at the data shows that a surprising amount of returns have already been filed given how early it is in the tax season. Plus, there's some good news for taxpayers. The average refund this year is considerably higher than last year.
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Let's take a look at what the IRS has done already, and get some insight into what determines the size of your refund check.
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How much are Americans getting in tax refunds?
To date, the IRS has received 13,177,000 tax returns. While that’s a lot, it's 14% fewer than the 15.3 million returns the agency had received by this time last year
While the IRS has received fewer returns to date, it has already issued a massive 23% more refunds: 3,231,000 compared to 2,616,000 sent out by this point in 2024. This suggests more people overpaid or people expecting a refund are filing earlier
The average refund check is also up by a whopping 38.2%: $1,928 compared to $1,395 in 2024.
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What determines the size of your refund check?
Your refund — if you qualify for one — is based on how much more you overpaid in taxes, particularly when taking tax credits, deductions and benefits into account. You may get a bigger refund if you:
- Have a new child in your family and qualify for a child tax credit
- Reduced your taxable income because you made big contributions to your tax-advantaged retirement plans.
- Became eligible for new deductions like the mortgage interest deduction or student loan interest deduction
- Signed up to have more taxes withheld from your paycheck
What to do with your money
While it may seem like a good thing to get a bigger refund, just remember that this is your money coming back to you — and it is money you couldn’t invest or earn interest on while the IRS had it.
You may be better off lowering the amount of taxes withheld from your pay this year to get a smaller refund next year and have access to your money now rather than later.
In the meantime, if you haven’t done your taxes and expect a refund, file as soon as you can to get what’s owed to you so you can put that money to work in investments.
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Christy Bieber has 15 years of experience as a personal finance and legal writer. She has written for many publications including Forbes, Kilplinger, CNN, WSJ, Credit Karma, Insurify and more.
