TurboTax Tax Trends Report: Tax Year 2022 Lookback

Our Tax Trends Report takes a look back at tax year 2022 and provides unique, data-driven insights into finance, tax, and economic trends for consumers, analysts, policymakers, and the general public. The report provides education, insights, and calls out proactive moves people can make to improve their finances and tax outcomes for tax year 2023. TurboTax uses anonymized and aggregated data drawn from 15 million TurboTax tax returns in compliance with U.S. tax regulation requirements, sampled to better reflect the general U.S. population of tax filers rather than the TurboTax customer base.

Data Reveals Lower Refunds, Changes in Finances for Single Parents and Newly Married, and Decrease in Crypto Transactions

Key Findings

Refunds: A reduction in the percentage of returns with refunds was most pronounced for low income tax filers. For example, 37.5% of single tax filers in the lowest income category received a refund in tax year 2022, down from 59.6% in tax year 2021.

Employment & Self-Employment: More people are turning to freelance, contract, or gig work for income. 8.1% of tax filers included either form 1099-K or 1099-NEC in their returns, up from 6.7% the prior year.

Income: Single tax filers with a dependent (Head of Household filers), such as single parents, experienced an 8.6% year-over-year increase in median adjusted gross income (AGI) in tax year 2022 (0.5% when adjusting for inflation), compared to 2.7% the prior year (-1.8%). In tax year 2022, 87% of those who moved into the Married Filing Jointly saw an AGI increase of 10% or more.

Investing: In tax year 2022, 2.3% of tax filers included crypto transactions in their returns, compared to just under 3% the prior year.

Findings included in this report are drawn from 15 million TurboTax anonymized accounts, sampled to match the IRS tax filer base in the United States. To ensure consistency in year-over-year comparisons, all users included have filed their taxes using TurboTax every Tax Year since 2020. All data has been anonymized and aggregated in compliance with US tax regulation requirements.