Approximately 23 million Americans claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit on their 2024 returns — and every single one of them was legally prohibited from receiving their refund before mid-February 2026, regardless of when they filed. Most of them did not know that going in.
I heard about Darlene Underwood at a block party in early March. A retired schoolteacher who recognized my byline pulled me aside near the grill and said, simply, “You should really talk to my neighbor. She went through something with her taxes this year.” Two days later, I was sitting across from Darlene at a Starbucks off Poplar Avenue in Memphis, watching her scroll back through six weeks of anxiety on her phone screen.
Darlene is 41, a licensed real estate agent who has worked the Memphis market for eleven years. She is also the primary caregiver for her mother, Gloria, 68, who moved in after a hip replacement in October 2025 left her unable to live alone. Two follow-up ER visits that fall cost Darlene roughly $7,400 out of pocket after insurance — most of it charged to a Visa card. She also carries an underwater auto loan on a 2019 Honda CR-V, a gap of approximately $4,200 between what she owes and what the car is worth on the open market.
The Refund She Had Already Spent on Paper
By the time Darlene sat down with her tax software on the evening of February 3, 2026, she had already done the math. Her estimated federal refund came to $3,847 — a figure that included the Earned Income Tax Credit she qualified for as a single filer supporting a dependent parent. In her notebook, she had already mapped the money: $2,200 toward the Visa balance, one month of her mother’s prescriptions, and whatever was left into savings.
“I had it all written out,” she told me, letting out a short laugh. “Like a little budget that assumed everything would go perfectly. Which, obviously.”
What Darlene had not fully absorbed was the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act — the PATH Act — a federal law that has required the IRS to hold refunds containing the Earned Income Tax Credit or Additional Child Tax Credit until mid-February every year since 2015. According to Hindustan Times’ reporting on the 2026 PATH Act schedule, even taxpayers who filed in late January could not receive EITC or ACTC funds before approximately February 17. Many waited longer depending on verification timelines.
She knew the delay existed in some vague sense. What she was entirely unprepared for was the second thing that happened — a wave of social media posts, beginning around February 8, claiming that a brand-new $1,390 stimulus check had been approved by Congress and was being deposited directly into Americans’ bank accounts.
The Rumor That Took Ten Days to Kill
Darlene saw the first post in a real estate agents’ Facebook group she belongs to. Then another. Then a screenshot of what appeared to be an IRS-style notice, circulating on Instagram. The claim was specific and confident: $1,390 per person, already approved, arriving within days.
“I actually texted my sister,” she said. “I said, ‘Have you heard about this? Is this real?’ And she sent me three more posts saying it was definitely real. So I started thinking — okay, so I’ve got my refund coming AND this check on top of it?”
The $1,390 figure had no basis in law. As Economic Times reported, the IRS confirmed no such payment existed, and the rumors appeared to stem from people conflating refund amounts with stimulus language — a cycle that has repeated each filing season since the COVID-era payments ended. The deadline to claim any remaining COVID-era stimulus through a Recovery Rebate Credit closed in April 2025.
A separate proposal — a so-called “tariff dividend” discussed by President Trump as a potential $2,000 payment — was also floating through the news cycle at the same time. According to Financial Express, that proposal remained legally uncertain as of early 2026, with constitutional questions potentially reaching the Supreme Court. No such payment had been issued to anyone.
The Phone Call That Ended the Confusion
Darlene held onto the stimulus hope for about ten days. On February 18, she did something she said she almost never does: she went directly to the source. She called the IRS, waited approximately 40 minutes on hold, and asked point-blank whether a $1,390 stimulus deposit was coming.
“They said no. Very clearly, no,” she recalled. “The lady was nice about it, but she was direct. She said, ‘That is not a real payment.’ Then she said, ‘What you may be waiting on is your tax refund, and I can check that for you.’”
The representative confirmed that Darlene’s return had been received and was in processing. Because she had claimed the EITC, the PATH Act hold applied — the refund had not yet been released as of that date. The representative also pointed her to the IRS’s online tracker.
Twenty-Two Days, and What They Cost Her
In the weeks between filing and receiving her refund, Darlene made a minimum payment on the Visa card — $148 — and skipped her usual $75 transfer into a small savings account she had been building since 2023. Her mother’s February prescription refill went onto a second credit card, adding another $312 to a balance that had not existed before October. She described the waiting period as a specific kind of financial anxiety she has a name for.
“I kept not looking at my bank account,” she told me. “That’s my thing. When I’m stressed about money, I just don’t look. I know that’s not good. But looking feels like it makes it more real.”
On the morning of February 25, her phone buzzed with a deposit notification before she had gotten out of bed. She saw $3,847 posted to her checking account at 6:47 a.m. She told me she just lay there for a moment.
She transferred $2,200 to the Visa card that same morning. The remaining $1,647 covered her mother’s outstanding medical co-pays and brought her savings account back to $400. The needle moved — but not as far as her original notepad plan had sketched out.
What Darlene Carries Forward
When I asked her what she would do differently for the 2027 filing season, she answered without hesitating. Check the IRS tracker from day one. Stop reading stimulus posts on Facebook. Know, before filing, whether the PATH Act applies to her return.
“The misinformation was genuinely stressful,” she said. “I was making mental plans around money that didn’t exist. And when it didn’t show up, it felt like a loss — even though I never had it. That part is hard to explain to someone who didn’t live it.”
Her situation is not unusual. For middle-income earners who rely on an annual refund to manage accumulated debt or cover care expenses, the gap between expectation and IRS reality — amplified each year by viral misinformation — carries a cost that does not show up in any refund check. The PATH Act delay is structural and predictable. The stimulus rumors are not new. But together, according to reporting on IRS direct deposit timelines, they continue to catch filers off guard each February.
Darlene still has roughly $5,200 remaining on the Visa card. Her auto loan gap has not closed. But she looked steadier when I asked about those numbers than she had sounded recounting those weeks in February. She pulled on her jacket — she had a showing in Germantown in thirty minutes — and offered one last thought on her way out the door.
“I’m still figuring it out,” she said. “But at least now I know where to actually look.”
Vivienne Marlowe Reyes is Senior Tax & Stimulus Writer at Check Day America. This article reflects one individual’s reported experience and does not constitute financial advice.
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