This year was the first that American’s filed their tax returns since implementation of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Under the new tax code, the standard deduction was nearly doubled and income tax rates were lowered across the board.  The Child Tax Credit was doubled and made available to more working families; the Alternative Minimum Tax was eliminated for all but the most affluent families; and the onerous individual mandate from Obamacare is no longer penalizing individuals who didn’t want to be forced t0 buy health insurance plans they couldn’t use or afford.

The New York Times confirms that “independent analyses have consistently found that a large majority of Americans would owe less because of the law.”

Despite this, many economic deniers continue to purport falsehoods regarding the GOP Tax Cuts.

The New York Times continues that “to a large degree, the gap between perception and reality on the tax cuts appears to flow from a sustained — and misleading — effort by liberal opponents of the law to brand it as a broad middle-class tax increase.”

Now that this tax filing season is ending, the facts are clear: Under our new tax code, workers get to keep more of their hard-earned money and they are spending less time filing their taxes.

Simplified Process: Under our new tax code, nine out of 10 families now file using the nearly doubled standard deduction – saving time and money, and resulting in millions of taxpayers no longer having to itemize and track numerous receipts.

As the Washington Times reports, this change saved “Americans 41 million hours of filing stress.”

The Times finds that, according to the National Taxpayers Union, “the net ‘tax compliance burden’ overall on the individual side was . . . $1.76 billion less than the previous year.”

More Money in Your Pocket: In addition to saving time, Americans got to keep more of their hard-earned money this year.

H&R Block recently reported seeing “overall tax liability is down 24.9 percent” this year – meaning workers and families are giving less of their money throughout the year to the federal government.  This is especially helpful for families living paycheck-to-paycheck, as they now have more wiggle room to buy groceries or pay down credit card debt.

In addition, H&R Block finds that refunds are also larger this year than last year.  Not only are taxpayers keeping more in each paycheck, but they are also getting a larger refund from the IRS this spring.

The Bottom Line:  As Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, wrote in a recent FOX op-ed: “Tax Day is always a headache. But as long as families and small businesses continue to have first say over their money rather than Washington, the U.S. economy will continue to soar for workers across the country.”