Next Year Could Be a Great Tax Refund Year

Could this really be the biggest tax refund season ever?

Some headlines are affirming it, but one expert says we're going to have get through a few things beyond New Years before we can say it's really the biggest ever.

President Donald Trump has said US taxpayers could be getting more money than expected as a result of his tariff measures on other nations, but Phillip Magness, a senior fellow and economic historian at the Independent Institute, says there are a couple of problems with that.

The good news is President Trump's Big Beautiful Bill "not only extends the previous tax cuts and make them permanent but it extends some of the deductions and exemptions category, the most famous being no tax on tips," Magness says.

So what's the problem?

"First off, there's no law by Congress that actually okays and enacts these tariff rebates, and the second component of that is, the Supreme Court is currently weighing the constitutionality of Trump's entire tariff program."

And the real problem could turn out to be if the Supreme Court rules that a president cannot unilaterally impose tariffs, which would send the tariff legal case back to a lower court of International Trade, a court that has already said "they intend to enforce the remedy of refunding that money if the Supreme Court rules against the tariffs."

It's hard to imagine the extremely complicated matter returning billions of dollars because the high court ruled against the president's tariffs, but there could be good news for us there, too.

"If the tariffs are ruled unconstitutional and are banned going forward, we get that back in our pocketbooks in the form of lowered prices at supermarkets and prices on retail goods.

Win-winning for the consumer.