A Preliminary Look At 2018 Tax Data

At the end of June, the IRS released the first set of tax return data from 2018.  These are the first numbers on the effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which was passed in December of 2017.  The preliminary data provides aggregate information by income group on a range of topics, including sources of income as well as deductions and credits taken by taxpayers.  It is important to note that this new information does not contain data from those who requested a filing extension. For this reason, it includes only about 80 percent of total income tax liability for the year 2018.  Overall, the data seems to match expectations about changes.  Let’s look at the highlights.

The visual below shows that the TCJA reduced effective tax rates, or total tax liability divided by an income group’s total adjusted gross income, for all income groups in 2018 compared to 2017.  Importantly, even though taxpayers throughout income groups saw a tax cut on average, individual circumstances vary.