Because your tax liability is higher. There may be a few other reasons as well.
Basically, your refund is
calculated by subtracting your tax liabilities from your Withholdings,
Payments, and Credits.
Your tax liability is calculated based
on your 2018 Tax Rates and other liabilities such as Self Employment Taxes
or penalties.
Your withholdings and credits
consist of what your employer withheld from your wages, estimated tax payments
you made and refundable and nonrefundable credits.
Changes in income which may put
you in a higher or lower tax bracket, changes in eligibility for tax credits
and deductions, changes in filing status or dependents, and changes in the
amount held from your paycheck or tax payments made will all affect your
refund.
To see the exact reason your refund
has changed look at your 2018
Form 1040 and
compare it to your return from last year. This year's form has changed
quite a bit, so you will need to compare item to item instead of line to line.
Start by comparing line 11 (Tax
liability) to your Tax liability from last year. You will also want to compare
line 16 (Federal Income Withheld) line 17 (Refundable Credits..Earned Income
Tax Credit, Additional Child Tax Credit, and American Opportunity Credit) to
last years credits.
Other lines you may want to
compare would be line 7 (AGI), 8 (Standard or Itemized Deductions) and 10
(Taxable Income) to last years numbers.
Looking at these numbers will
explain why your refund is less.
If you would like to adjust your
Federal Withholdings you can use the W-4 calculator to help you figure out what
changes you would need to make to increase your refund. You can do this by
clicking here W4 Calculator
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