‘The pessimists are wrong’: Fox News tax expert says big refunds signal a strong economy, but is he missing something?

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Many Americans are feeling bearish about the economy, with May's Economic Confidence Index hitting the lowest level since 2022. While the numbers have rebounded slightly to -39 in August from -45 in May, consumer confidence remains low (1).

But some Americans are more optimistic than others, and Julio Gonzalez, founder of Engineered Tax Services, is one of them, writing in a Sept. 3 Fox News op-ed that "the pessimists are wrong, and the numbers prove it (2)."

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Gonzalez wrote that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed into law by President Trump in 2025, contributed to strong economic growth, as evidenced by increased business investment and a $43 billion increase in IRS tax refunds in the 2026 tax filing season (3).

"Anyone still calling this economy weak isn't paying attention to the right indicators," he wrote.

The op-ed cited key OBBBA changes allowing companies to write off more investments upfront — including the permanent restoration of the 100% first-year depreciation deduction (4) and a higher Section 179 deduction limit (5) — as catalysts for recent corporate expansion. Data backs this up, with employers planning hiring increases (6) in the second half of the year and U.S. business activity in August surging to the highest level in 52 months (7).

However, large IRS refunds aren't necessarily a sign of a strong economy, and Gonzalez didn't mention that refunds were abnormally large in part because the IRS didn't adjust withholding tables after OBBBA's passage, despite applying the law retroactively (8). This means employers continued to withhold taxes without consideration of deduction and rate changes, resulting in too much being withheld from workers' checks.

Regardless, large refunds and corporate investments tell only one part of the story.

The AI boom and large capital investments in data centers account for a significant share of the increase in business investment (9). Income gains in recent years have been concentrated among low- and high-income Americans, with the middle class not getting a large enough share of the pie (10).