Home Furnishing, Footwear benefit most from tax refund spending in 2024

Available to clients in the IRS Payments dashboard. Contact Sales for details.

Total tax dollars refunded and their average check size through April 26th* grew 2.2% and 1.2% YoY, respectively, in Earnest Analytics’ IRS Payments dashboard, in-line with reported figures**. The small increases follow a soft 2023 season where the total dollars and their average size fell 10.2% and 7.8%, respectively, lapping stimulus programs. While growth eventually caught up, this season also started off soft due to a later start: the IRS began accepting and processing tax returns on January 29, 2024, one week after the January 23rd, 2023 start date last year. 

Home Furnishing and Footwear benefited from refunds into April, but slowed for Apparel, Auto Parts, and Electronics. Express, Adidas, Wayfair, Macy’s, Lululemon benefited in April, as noted in the full report.

Notes

*Dates in this analysis are defined as in the IRS’ filing statistics: 1/29/2024-4/26/2024 for the ‘24 season, 1/23/23-4/28/23 for the ‘23 season, 1/24/22-4/29/22 for the ‘22 season, 2/12/21-4/30/21 for the ‘21 season, 1/27/20-5/1/20 for the ‘20 season, and 1/28/19-5/3/19 for the ‘19 season. Note the ‘21 season was delayed due to Covid and began late on 2/12. Also note the ‘24 season began one week after the start of the ‘23 season.

**The IRS’ filing statistics reported that the total dollars refunded increased 2.2% YoY (with direct deposits up 0.8% YoY) with the average size up 2.7%.