Administration Delays Release Of Irs Data Showing Impact Of Gop Tax Cuts

The Trump administration is delaying the release of detailed data showing how Republicans’ 2025 tax cuts affected millions of Americans’ taxes, even as it tries to sell voters on the law ahead of the midterm elections.

The numbers document which tax breaks were claimed by people in different income brackets, as well as information like how much they paid in taxes.

The IRS typically releases the data in the wake of each filing season, but this year's rollout is more anticipated because it’s expected to provide the first detailed look at how taxpayers are taking advantage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including its new deductions for overtime wages and tipped income.

The data was scheduled to be released in July, and then updated again in September, as the IRS processed more people’s returns —but the agency hasn't published either. The IRS said it is awaiting approval from the Treasury Department to publish the figures. But the delay has already irked some who complain it is part of a pattern of the administration withholding otherwise routine releases of tax data.

“I think they are hiding stuff that doesn’t line up with all the crowing the CEO has been doing,” Nina Olson, a former national taxpayer advocate, said of Frank Bisignano, the IRS's day-to-day leader who has joined Republican lawmakers in touting the breaks to voters.

The lack of detailed numbers on the 2026 filing season comes as the agency is also under fire for withholding a periodic report on the so-called tax gap, which is the share of taxes owed but not yet paid.

A Trump administration official told POLITICO in an emailed statement that its "priority is to release accurate and reliable data" following "major changes" to the tax code.

During the filing season, the IRS publishes weekly top-line statistics documenting how many returns it processed, how many refunds it issued and how much money taxpayers typically got back — figures the administration hyped earlier this year as evidence of the benefits of their tax cuts.

But the delayed data is far more granular, showing the uptake of individual provisions in the code as well as things like how much more people in different income groups reported earning, and how many people still owed money to the IRS at the time of filing.

In past years, the figures have created problems for the majority party when they didn’t show what lawmakers hoped for. Republicans took heat when the figures released the first year after their 2017 tax cuts showed fewer people taking deductions for charitable contributions, for example.

It’s possible this year’s figures include less-than-flattering details about Republicans’ tax cuts — they could show the tax burden shifting between income groups, for instance, or a suspicious number of people claiming specific breaks, said Barry Johnson, a former top IRS official.

But the reason why the data isn't out yet could also be more mundane, like if an unusual number of people requested filing extensions.

“There’s all sorts of things it could be — you can’t know until you see the data whether it’s they don’t like the answers, or whether the data themselves really isn’t useful,” said Johnson, who was the IRS’s chief data and analytics officer from 2014 to 2025.

But the Treasury isn’t supposed to be blocking the release of the figures, he said, pointing to a law Trump signed in his first term that gave statistical agencies, like the IRS, more power to decide when to publish data.

“By law, the IRS determines what they release and when it gets released,” said Johnson. “Treasury shouldn’t have a role in determining the timing of any statistical release.

“It’s unusual,” he said.

The first batch of data, showing figures through May, was originally slated for release in July, but is now listed on the IRS's website as “pending.” The update with numbers through July was slated to go out Sept. 17.

The figures, when they're finally released, won’t be the final word on this filing season because they don’t include people who asked for filing extensions and now face an Oct. 15 deadline for completing their returns. Those taxpayers tend to be wealthier, so they tend to be understated in the figures.

The mid-July data typically covers 95% of taxpayers, 87% of the income reported and 82% of the taxes paid, the IRS says.