The letter arrived on a Tuesday in late January — a single sheet of IRS paper that, according to Monique Washington, felt heavier than anything she’d carried off a UPS truck in seventeen years. It wasn’t a check. It was a CP05 notice: her 2025 federal tax refund had been selected for review, and the agency needed up to 60 days to verify her income, withholding, and the dependent she had claimed. Her brother, Darnell, 37, had been that dependent for the better part of a decade on paper — and for much longer than that in real life.
When I sat down with Monique Washington at a diner near her home in West Baltimore on a cold Wednesday morning in March 2026, she had her CP05 letter with her in a manila folder alongside a printed copy of her Where’s My Refund transcript. She smoothed both documents flat on the table with the methodical calm of someone who has learned to manage chaos by organizing paper.
How Monique Got to This Point — and What She Was Owed
Monique has driven a UPS route in Baltimore since 2009. She earns a union wage that, after overtime, put her 2025 gross income at approximately $84,600. On paper, that sounds comfortable. In practice, she told me, the math tells a different story.
Darnell was 25 when a driver ran a red light and struck the passenger side of his car. The accident left him with a traumatic brain injury that requires daily support for medication management, transportation, and the cognitive tasks most adults handle on their own. Their parents died within three years of each other — their mother in 2017, their father in 2019 — leaving Monique as the only family member available and willing to step in.
Darnell receives Social Security Disability Insurance — roughly $1,180 per month in 2025 — but that amount doesn’t stretch to cover his accessible transportation needs, the supplemental aides his Medicaid waiver excludes, or the adaptive equipment that wears out faster than any insurance reimbursement schedule acknowledges. Monique fills the gap. She estimates she spent approximately $15,720 out of pocket on his care in 2025 alone.
“I don’t think about it as a budget,” she told me, stirring her coffee without drinking it. “I think about it as: what does he need this week, and do I have it. I stopped doing long-term financial planning somewhere around 2021.”
What She Claimed and Why the IRS Flagged It
Monique filed her 2025 federal return on February 3, 2026, using a paid tax preparer she has worked with for four years. She claimed Darnell as a qualifying relative dependent under IRS rules — a designation available to taxpayers who provide more than half of a person’s total support for the year and whose gross income falls below a specific threshold. For tax year 2025, that gross income limit for qualifying relatives was $5,050, according to IRS Publication 501.
Darnell’s SSDI income doesn’t count toward that threshold for dependency purposes under current IRS rules — a distinction that Monique’s preparer had documented carefully. She also claimed a portion of his unreimbursed medical expenses as itemized deductions. Her expected refund of $3,840 reflected federal withholding overpayments throughout the year.
The CP05 arrived on January 28, 2026 — just 25 days after she filed. The IRS’s Where’s My Refund tool, which Monique checked daily, shifted from “Return Received” to “We have received your tax return and it is being reviewed” and stayed there. No additional correspondence arrived. No phone call. Just the holding pattern.
The Sixty-Day Waiting Room Nobody Prepared Her For
What Monique described next was less a financial crisis and more a slow-burn exhaustion — the kind that accumulates when every contingency plan depends on a single incoming payment. She had delayed ordering Darnell’s compression garments, which cost approximately $340 per set and aren’t covered by his Medicaid plan. She had pushed back a repair on the accessible van she uses to transport him to his weekly therapy appointment. She had not, she said flatly, taken a day off since December.
That last point landed harder than the dollar figures. Monique told me she hasn’t taken a real vacation — meaning more than two consecutive days away from Baltimore — in six years. She can’t change her shift at UPS because her current schedule aligns with Darnell’s aide’s hours. She can’t relocate. She can’t, as she put it, “make any of the moves that would make my own life easier.”
She called the IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service line twice during the waiting period. The first call resulted in a hold time of over two hours before she disconnected. The second call, placed on a Friday morning before her route, connected her to a representative who confirmed the return was under review but could not provide a more specific timeline. “She was very polite,” Monique said. “But polite doesn’t pay for medical tape.”
What the Refund Actually Covered — and What It Couldn’t
The $3,840 arrived as a direct deposit on April 10, 2026 — 67 days after she filed. Monique told me she had the deposit alert set on her phone and checked it before her 6 a.m. shift. She didn’t celebrate, exactly. She opened a spreadsheet.
When I asked what she would have done with the money if she hadn’t needed to cover the backlog, she was quiet for a moment. “Retirement, maybe. I haven’t put anything into my 401(k) in three years. My union has a good plan. I just — there’s always something more urgent.” She said it without bitterness, which somehow made it worse to hear.
Her tax preparer has already flagged several items for the 2026 return: potential adjustments to her withholding to avoid a large refund next year, and a review of whether additional unreimbursed expenses qualify under current IRS guidelines. Monique said she appreciated the advice. She also said she wasn’t sure she had the bandwidth to engage with it before summer.
The Larger Picture Behind One Delayed Refund
Monique’s situation sits at the intersection of several policy gaps that affect millions of family caregivers across the country. There is no federal refundable tax credit specifically designed for adult family caregivers — a gap that advocacy organizations have pushed Congress to address for years. The existing Credit for Other Dependents, which Monique’s preparer confirmed she qualified for, provides a non-refundable credit of up to $500 per qualifying dependent, according to IRS guidelines. That amount, Monique noted, covers roughly two weeks of Darnell’s supplemental aide hours.
The CP05 review process itself adds a layer of administrative friction that falls disproportionately on filers with complex dependency situations. The IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service has repeatedly cited refund delays as a significant burden for low- and moderate-income filers who depend on annual refunds to cover essential expenses — a category that, based on what Monique described, clearly includes her.
When I left the diner, Monique had a 7 a.m. route starting in less than an hour. She tucked her manila folder back into her tote bag alongside a printed copy of Darnell’s next therapy schedule. She didn’t seem angry, exactly. She seemed like someone who had long ago made a private decision to keep moving and only occasionally allowed herself to notice the weight of it.
The refund came. It covered what it needed to cover. Her retirement account remains at the same balance it held three years ago. She has not yet rescheduled a vacation.
Related: The IRS Letter That Almost Cost Me My Full 2025 Tax Refund — And What You Can Do Right Now
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