Visits to the Internal Revenue Service website are surging as tax season winds down, with just a month left to file.
IRS.gov visits across the 2026 filing season reached 321.5 million last week, government data showed. That’s up nearly 53% from the same period in 2025 as taxpayers zero in on their obligations and any potential benefits in an especially complex year for taxes, since President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act introduced new deductions and expanded others.
The average federal tax refund, meanwhile, has hit $3,676, a 10.6% increase from the same week last year, the IRS said. Tax refunds were expected to be larger this year, and experts noted in a recent Bank of America Global Research report that returns may have temporarily helped put a slight dent in the yawning spending gap between lower- and higher-income consumers — part of the “K-shaped” economy — in February.
Still, “so far, Bank of America deposit account data suggests that higher-income households have received larger increases in their tax refunds compared to other income cohorts,” the report said.
“BofA Global Research also notes that the stimulus from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) has so far come primarily through lower tax payments rather than refunds, a dynamic that may skew more toward higher-income households,” the report continued.
As of last Friday, the government had processed nearly 44 million refunds, with almost $161 million returned to taxpayers. The deadline to file is April 15.
