The conventional wisdom about tax season goes like this: file early, get your money fast. It is the message plastered across every tax software ad from January through April, and most years, it holds up well enough. But the people who need their refunds the most — the ones counting days, not just checking a tracker — know that the IRS’s timeline and their own financial timeline rarely match. Glenn Castillo learned that the hard way in the winter of 2026.
I met Glenn on a Tuesday morning in late January at a free tax preparation clinic held inside a community center in Memphis’s Midtown neighborhood. The clinic was run by volunteers certified through the IRS’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, and the waiting area was full — mostly retirees, a few young families, one woman with a folder so thick it had a rubber band around it. Glenn was sitting near the window with his hands folded on the table, watching the door. He looked like a man who had been waiting for something for a long time.
When I introduced myself and explained I was reporting on how real people navigate tax season, he paused for a moment before agreeing to talk. “I don’t usually talk about money stuff,” he told me. “But I figure if someone else is in the same boat, maybe it helps them to know they’re not alone.”
A Household Running on Tight Math
Glenn Castillo is 57 years old, married, and the father of two kids — a daughter who is 11 and a son who just turned 7. He has worked the front desk at a mid-scale hotel near Memphis International Airport for nine years. His wife, Denise, works part-time as a dental office receptionist, typically pulling in around $1,100 a month. Together, their combined household income for 2025 came in at roughly $74,000 — upper-middle by most measures, but not when you factor in what Glenn described as years of compounding financial pressure.
“On paper it looks fine,” Glenn said. “But we had some rough years. I had a medical thing in 2021, we had some credit card stuff we’re still digging out of. The house needs a new roof. It adds up.” His credit score, he told me quietly, sits somewhere around 588 — damaged by a period of missed payments during a medical leave in 2021 that wiped out their emergency fund.
The most urgent pressure in early 2026 was a property tax arrearage on their home in the Binghampton neighborhood. Glenn and Denise owe Shelby County approximately $2,340 in back property taxes from 2024, with a delinquency notice warning that the account could be referred to a tax sale process if not resolved by April 15, 2026. Glenn had been banking on his federal refund to cover most of it.
Filing Early, Waiting Longer Than Expected
Glenn filed his 2025 federal return on January 27, 2026, using a free filing software option he accessed through the IRS Free File program. The return was accepted by the IRS on January 29. His expected refund: $3,412, driven largely by the Child Tax Credit for his two children and standard withholding from his W-2 wages.
According to the IRS refunds page, most electronically filed returns with direct deposit are processed within 21 days. Glenn checked the “Where’s My Refund” tool on February 19 — 21 days after acceptance — and saw the same message he’d been seeing since day one: “Your return is still being processed.”
“I called the IRS number on February 20,” Glenn told me. “They said I had to wait 21 days after the 21-day window before they could even open a case. So I had to wait 42 days total before anyone would even look at it.” He called back on March 11, at the 42-day mark, and was told his return had been flagged for identity verification — a process that, according to the IRS, can add several weeks to processing time.
The Letter That Finally Explained Everything — Six Weeks Late
Glenn received a Letter 5071C from the IRS on March 14, 2026. The letter asked him to verify his identity online or by calling a dedicated number. He completed the online verification the same day it arrived. “I sat down right at the kitchen table and did it,” he said. “It took maybe 15 minutes. I kept thinking — why didn’t they send this in February?”
After completing identity verification on March 14, the IRS website updated his refund status to “Refund Approved” on March 22. His deposit arrived on April 14, 2026 — one day before the Shelby County property tax deadline. The total time from filing to deposit: 77 days.
What the Numbers Look Like After the Dust Settles
The $3,412 deposit landed in Glenn’s checking account on the morning of April 14. He paid the $2,340 Shelby County property tax arrearage the following day, April 15, avoiding the tax sale referral process by a single day. The remaining $1,072 went toward a past-due balance on a home equity line of credit.
“We made it,” Glenn said, when I followed up with him by phone in mid-April. “But I don’t want to cut it that close again. That was too much stress for too long.” He said Denise had been checking the tracker almost daily for weeks, and that the uncertainty had created real tension at home during an already difficult stretch.
There is no surplus. Glenn told me he has roughly $340 in savings after the allocations — less than one week of household expenses. “I know what people would say,” he told me. “They’d say I should have had more saved up, shouldn’t have been depending on the refund. And they’re right. But that’s not where we are right now.”
The Part That Still Bothers Him
When I asked Glenn what he wished he had known going into this tax season, he didn’t hesitate. “I wish I had known that ‘accepted’ doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “I thought accepted meant it was done. I didn’t know there was this whole other layer where they could just… hold it.”
According to the IRS identity verification guidance, the agency has significantly expanded its identity fraud screening in recent years, which means more legitimate filers are getting caught in delays that have nothing to do with errors on their return. The IRS processed approximately 163 million individual returns in fiscal year 2024, and delays from identity verification flags affected a meaningful share of early filers.
Glenn’s situation also reflects a broader pattern: households that are technically upper-middle income but carrying enough legacy debt that a single delayed payment can create a cascade. His property tax arrearage, his damaged credit score, his near-empty savings account — none of those are the result of recklessness. They are the residue of a medical crisis in 2021 that the family has been slowly climbing out of for five years.
When I sat with Glenn at the end of our final conversation, I asked him what the experience had changed, if anything. He was quiet for a moment. “I’m going to try to not need the refund to be my plan,” he said. “I don’t know if I can do that. But I’m going to try.” He said it without drama, the way a person says something they’ve been turning over in their mind for weeks — not as a resolution, but as a reckoning.
There is no triumphant ending here, exactly. The property tax got paid. The family is still in their house. Glenn still goes to work every morning at 6 a.m. and manages a front desk with the kind of quiet competence that nobody outside of his workplace will ever notice. But the 77 days between filing and deposit cost him something beyond money — a sustained, low-grade anxiety that he carried alone, the way proud people do, because asking for help felt like giving something up that he wasn’t ready to lose.
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