The only thing fun about tax season is dreaming what you'll do with any tax refund. The good news for some is the average tax refund issued by the IRS so far is $3,182, which is up from last year.

As of March 1, the latest data available, the Internal Revenue Service reported that the average refund was up 5.1% from $3,028 during a similar timeframe through March 3, 2023. This year's data includes an extra day in February due to leap year.

The IRS received more than 54 million tax returns during the first five weeks of this tax season, which began Jan. 29. That's down 1.7% from a year ago. Last year's tax season began about a week earlier on Jan. 23.

The flipside: The number of tax refunds issued so far are down from a year ago. The IRS issued 36.28 million tax refunds through March 1, down 13.7% from a year ago.

The total amount refunded through March 1 was nearly $115.5 billion, down 9.3% from a year ago.

We've not heard of too many headaches with tax refunds issued by the IRS so far this tax season. The IRS stated that filing season statistics so far "continue to show a strong start to Filing Season 2024, with all systems running well."

Contact personal finance columnist Susan Tompor: stompor@freepress.com. Follow her on X (Twitter) @tompor.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: What is the average tax refund? Why it's going up in 2024