I recently retired and have never saw a refund this large why is my refund so high

[Anonymous]

we can't see your return. a guess would be that your withholding was based on you not retiring.  retiring and then have lower taxable income but higher than required withholding would produce this situation. 

[SteamTrain]

...another thing to check if the refund is really unreasonable?

Edit any forms that you entered data into that had tax withholding entered...sometimes the tax withholding $$ are mis-keyed with an extra digit, or a decimal place in the wrong position and you didn't notice it when you entered that data.  Double check the numbers on each software form.