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The IRS handed Americans a much bigger pile of cash in 2026 — and the White House is calling it the "Trump Bump."

The windfall came in the form of tax refunds. By the end of the 2026 filing season, the IRS had issued $296 billion in taxpayer refunds, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) (1). That's $43 billion more than the year before — a 17% jump.

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And it wasn't simply because more people received refunds.

The average refund climbed by $333, or 11%, to $3,275, up from $2,942 during the comparable period in 2025. The IRS also sent out over 8 million more refunds this year.

The White House seized on the numbers, touting (2) the increase as a "Trump Bump" for American taxpayers.

So what's behind the extra money?

The GAO pointed to tax changes enacted under President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which created new deductions millions of taxpayers could claim when filing their 2025 returns. Among them were the much-publicized "no tax on tips" and "no tax on overtime" provisions.

Those tax breaks received plenty of attention during filing season. What has drawn far less attention is what happened afterward: taxpayers collectively received $43 billion more in refunds than they did a year earlier.

Trump, for his part, did offer taxpayers expecting bigger checks a characteristically simple piece of advice earlier this year.

"Don't spend all of this money in one place!" he wrote (3).

For many households, that raises an immediate question: What's the smartest way to use a sudden cash infusion?

Whether you're thinking about shoring up your finances, preparing for uncertainty or putting that extra money to work, here are a few ways Americans could consider investing their potential windfall.

'The best thing to do,' according to Warren Buffett

The U.S. stock market has been a powerful engine of wealth creation. Trump has pointed to that strength, stating (4) that "the only thing that's really going up big? It's the stock market and your 401(k)s."