Trump may hand out fatter tax refunds this year, but whether a short-staffed IRS can get it to you is a different matter, watchdog warns

A fiscal centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s agenda so far has been his pledge to lower taxes, and Americans are close to seeing healthy refunds from their 2026 filings. But actually seeing those returns show up on time might not be so straightforward, according to a recent federal watchdog report, largely due to another of Trump’s signature policy stances.

The Trump administration’s purge of the federal bureaucracy last year did not spare the Internal Revenue Service, the agency...