Most American households were not eagerly awaiting a set of tax data that was supposed to come out from the Internal Revenue Service in July. Now the data is missing, with little explanation — and that’s attracting growing attention.
The Statistics of Income publication is a standard release, dropped on the IRS website at predictable intervals. It contains information about what tax breaks different income levels are making use of. Delays are typically accompanied by some sort of more or less reasonable explanation. July’s publication, had it been released, would have shown some of the earliest indications of how successful the GOP’s changes to taxes on tips and overtime were for lower- and middle-income tax filers, and how beneficial a number of the bill’s provisions were for America’s most wealthy.
The data release was delayed first until September and, then, indefinitely, with Politico reporting that the IRS was waiting for approval from the Treasury Department.
The saga has become one of the latest examples of a move by President Donald Trump’s administration that data policy experts told TPM could compromise public trust in the formerly stalwart American statistical system.
“The unfortunate truth is that it doesn’t really matter whether or not the statistics are valid and accurate…,” said Hannah Bloch-Wehba, a professor of law at Texas A&M University who specializes in law and technology. “What’s happening is an overall pattern in eroding trust in the quality of government data and information.”
The data has gone missing ahead of a midterm in which it might have helped voters decide how to cast a ballot. Had the data depicted low uptake for “no tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime” — arguably the party’s single most populist economic policies of the last year and a half — it would have made headlines and undercut Republican messaging around Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. Data showing the opposite might have helped uplift the party. But with what’s now been a three-month delay, the public is not likely to know how big of a hit or miss “no tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime” have been.
“I worry that if there’s an appearance that those data are being withheld or manipulated by the political side of the department, then people will not trust the work that SOI does,” Barry Johnson, former director of the IRS Statistics of Income Division, told TPM. “And that would be a real loss.”
Johnson said that law prohibits the Treasury Department from having any role in determining what data products come out of the IRS program and when those products should be released.
“In this case,” said Johnson, “it seems like [IRS staff] has produced the product, and that it’s being held in the department.”
The Treasury Department and the IRS did not respond to separate TPM requests for comment.
Trump built the foundation of his second term on federal data suppression and manipulation. Immediately upon taking office, he removed scores of federal data sets and statistics, the scale of which took more than a year to fully quantify. Trump’s administration removed race and ethnicity statistics from an Office of Personnel Management database tracking federal government employment prior to the administration’s decimation of the federal workforce, which disproportionately harmed Black women. It altered datasets that had previously collected information on gender, sexuality, and trans people, including in federal surveys that were explicitly about gender violence and health outcomes that disproportionately affect queer people.
When a Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report showed a weakening employment market, Trump tried to politicize the apolitical agency, fired BLS head Erika McEntarfer, and attempted to install a highly-partisan economist with minimal experience and who once ran a racist, sexist Twitter account.
Similarly, Trump has long sought to influence economic data and monetary policy at the Federal Reserve. His attack on former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell drew strong pushback from members of his own party after the Department of Justice launched a sham criminal investigation into Powell. That the delayed IRS release is also economic in nature, said Hannah Bloch-Wehba, should not be ignored.
“The government seems to understand very well that the data is going to mean something in particular for market actors,” Bloch-Wehba, a professor of law at Texas A&M, told TPM.
Information that adds one more data points to the suggestion that Trump’s OBBBA did not invigorate the economy as he and his party have continued to claim could spook investors, said Bloch-Wehba.
“Let’s see it that way, in conjunction with BLS data and other economic data that the government also produces.”
A new poll from Politico showed potential voters were more concerned about the rising cost of living and taxing billionaires than the so-called “no tax on tips.” Tipped income over $25,000 is still taxed under the provision, which is temporary. The overtime provision also comes with income caps and other caveats. And reporting by the Washington Sun from Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District — which includes part of Las Vegas, with an economy driven by tipped workers — shows steep dips in tourism and persistent price inflation could be making any benefits from the new tax provisions a moot point. The Cook Political Report shifted that Nevada congressional race further in Democrats’ favor on Oct. 9.
There could be a number of reasons the statistics of income data has been delayed this year, Johnson said. The 2025 tax bill made tax code changes that went into effect before guidance about how to process those changes was released by the federal government, for example. There could be data compatibility issues, he said. But during his more than 10 years leading the division, Johnson said there was not an instance that Treasury held up data products to this degree and that some sort of official statement did not accompany the delay.
“It could be that everything was humming along fine and somebody just doesn’t like what they show,” said Johnson. “Without looking at the data, you just don’t know.”
