Business in brief: Average tax refund up $125

With nearly half this year’s tax returns filed, the average refund is $2,548, up more than $100 from last year, Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Mark Everson said Tuesday.

Everson, in remarks prepared for a House hearing, said the tax agency had issued 50.5 million refunds out of the 60.9 million returns received as of March 10, for a total of $128.7 billion. He said the average refund was up about $125 from last year.

The IRS expects to process about 136 million individual tax returns in 2007. Everson said that about three-fourths of those already filed were done electronically, an increase of about 5 percent over the same period last year. More than 13.3 million e-filed from their personal computers.

Olympia

Unemployment rate a bit better

Spokane County’s unemployment rate in February averaged 6.1 percent, a small improvement over January’s 6.3, according to figures released by the Washington State Employment Security Department.

The county’s February performance remained unchanged from the same time last year.

Statewide, the jobless rate last month totaled 4.8 percent, a slight improvement from January’s 5.1.

The United States reported 4.5 percent unemployment rate in February, close to January’s 4.6 percent but better than a year-over-year 4.8 percent figure.

In Spokane, most of the boost came from additional service providers (1,900 jobs), additional education and health services workers (1,100) and more government employees (600), figures show.

Washington

Tower Records Web sale OK’d

A bankruptcy judge approved the Tower Records sale of its Web site business to an affiliate of Miami-based music seller Caiman Inc. for about $4.2 million.

Judge Brendan Shannon of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., on Tuesday signed off on the deal with Caiman Holdings Inc., a British Virgin Islands holding company affiliated with Caiman. The chief executive of Caiman, Didier Pilon, also serves as a director of Caiman Holdings, according to court papers.

Caiman, which sells music, books and DVDs on its own site, is also a major reseller on Amazon.com.