For the first time ever, the IRS this year no longer will mail out refund payments via paper checks, with the stated goals of lowering costs, reducing fraud and getting money into people’s hands more quickly.
“Tax season 2026 brings some of the most significant tax code changes we’ve seen in years,” said Carl Breedlove, principal tax research analyst with the Tax Institute at H&R Block. “The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ makes some rules permanent, introduces new ones and creates a wide mix of deductions and credits that will impact individual taxpayers and businesses.”
Tax time
The IRS starts accepting and processing tax returns for 2025 on Jan. 26. The filing deadline is April 15.
The IRS issued tax refunds to more than 93 million individual filers in fiscal year 2024, including more than 4.3 million taxpayers in Ohio, agency data states. The federal government refunded about $13.4 billion to Ohio filers that year, averaging out to about $3,100 per tax refund.
President Trump’s One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act made his 2017 tax cuts permanent and increased the standard deduction and created an additional deduction for seniors. The bill also allows some taxpayers to deduct their tips, overtime pay and interest on their auto loans, plus it increased the child tax credit.
New deductions, higher standard deductions and inflation-adjusted tax brackets are the biggest changes that are most likely to impact the amount of money taxpayers owe or the size of their refunds, says Experian.
Families on average can expect to see an extra $1,000 in their refunds this year, says the White House and Republican leaders, including Jason Smith, who is chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means.
Alex Muresianu, senior policy analyst with the Tax Foundation, told this news outlet that taxpayers who receive refunds could see the payouts increase by between $300 and $1,000 this year. However, he said many people will see a pretty small change to the baseline.
“There’s a lot of internal variation based on individual circumstances,” he told the Dayton Daily News. “It could be a very small change or it might be significant, depending on your tax situation and what type of income you have.”
The IRS issues tax refunds because the federal government withheld more of taxpayers’ incomes than they owed. Tax refunds essentially can be thought of as interest-free loans to the federal government, Muresianu said.
The Tax Policy Center says Trump’s tax cuts could reduce 2025 income taxes on average by about $650 per family. The center says two-thirds of families could get an average tax cut of $1,030, but the cuts primarily benefit higher-income households.
The center estimates that about 9% of households will pay less tax on their overtime; 3% of households will benefit from the deduction for tipped income; and about half of people 65 and older will benefit from a new $6,000 deduction for seniors. The center says only 16% of families in the bottom income quintile will see a tax cut, of about $220 on average.
The IRS did not adjust withholdings to account for the new or increased deductions from the One, Big, Beautiful Bill, which likely will be a big driver of increased refunds for tax year 2025, said Breedlove, with the Tax Institute at H&R Block.
No more paper checks
An executive order that President Trump issued in March 2025 required the IRS and all other federal agencies to stop issuing paper checks by Sept. 30 of last year.
The IRS says that about 93% of tax-filers across the nation now receive their refunds through direct deposit, including the vast majority of Ohioans. Still, the agency issued about 4.9 million paper refunds to people across the country in 2025. Paper checks are more than 16 times more likely to be lost, stolen, delayed or altered than electronic payments, says the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Service.
Some of the people who have continued to receive paper checks do not have a checking or savings account at a bank or credit union. About 4.2% of households in Ohio are “unbanked,” says a 2023 survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
FDIC research found people often do not have accounts because they don’t have the funds to meet minimum balance requirements; they do not trust the banks; or they do not want to deal with fees or minimum balance stipulations.
For 2025 returns filed this year, taxpayers will need to provide the IRS with direct deposit information unless they qualify for an exception or they are willing to accept delays, says the Taxpayer Advocate Service.
Tax-filers without access to bank accounts can have their refunds sent electronically to prepaid debit cards or digital wallets, said IRS spokesperson John Fuld.
By the numbers
4.3 million: Number of refunds IRS issued to Ohio taxpayers
$13.3 billion: Amount of refunds IRS issued to Ohio taxpayers
$3,100: Average refund amount in Ohio
Jan. 26, 2025: First day of 2026 tax filing season
April 15, 2026: Filing deadline for 2025 tax returns
Source: IRS data for FY 2024
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