Tariff refunds move from court order to system development. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is still building the machinery needed to refund roughly $166 billion in tariff collections, plus interest, after the Supreme Court ruled in February that the president did not have the authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. In a court filing, the agency said its four-part refund system is between 40 percent and 80 percent complete, with an online claims portal in development and the mass-processing piece the furthest behind. More than 330,000 importers paid the tariffs on 53 million shipments, but only about 21,000 were registered in the existing system to receive refunds. CBP has said the new process could begin accepting claims as soon as mid-April, though it has not said how quickly payments would go out. CBP, however, warned that they may need to write regulations first.
Proposed: Tariff rebate checks for households. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) unveiled a bill that would create a new tax rebate for households affected by the now-invalid reciprocal tariffs. His proposal would provide $1,200 to joint filers earning less than $180,000, $600 to single filers earning less than $90,000, and $600 to heads of household earning less than $120,000, plus another $600 for each dependent child. That means a family of four filing jointly under the income cap would receive $2,400.
Public comment can help shape tariff policy under Section 301. After the Supreme Court barred the Trump administration from using IEEPA for broad tariffs, the White House turned to Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 as a more durable path for rebuilding tariff authority. USTR has now launched Section 301 investigations involving 60 economies, and because the law requires public notice, comments, and a formal record before tariffs can be imposed, the process could shape not only these cases but also how far future tariff authority extends. Brookings Institution's Kari Heerman and TPC's Elena Patel explain.
South Carolina weighs a late tax conformity fix. In South Carolina, lawmakers are considering H.B. 3368, a measure that would temporarily align the state tax code with federal law for 2025 returns. Tax professionals told the station that the change could especially help seniors, tipped workers, and people who earned overtime, with some filers potentially receiving several hundred dollars more, and in some cases up to about $800. The bill has not yet cleared the Senate; if lawmakers do not act quickly, some people who already filed may miss out on the added refund this season unless they take the time and possibly pay preparers to file amended returns.
Washington State eases one tax on wealth while advancing another. The Seattle Times reports that Washington lawmakers approved a rollback of last year’s estate tax increase even as they continued moving a separate tax on very high earners. The Senate voted 39-10 to soften the estate tax change that had pushed the state’s top rate to 35 percent. If Gov. Bob Ferguson (D-WA) signs the measure, the top rate would return to its earlier level for estates of people who die on or after July 1, 2026. Lawmakers described the move as a course correction after Washington became an unusually high-tax outlier on estates, even as they kept pressing ahead with a new income tax on individuals earning more than $1 million a year.
Itemized: Fact of the Week. TPC estimates that tariffs announced by the Trump administration through December 4, 2025, will impose an average burden of about $1,230 per household in 2026. Households in the bottom fifth of the income distribution would see their federal tax rate rise by 1.1 percentage points, compared with 0.9 percentage points for households in the top fifth.
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