Have you ever built an entire financial plan around a single deposit — one you were certain was coming — only to watch the calendar flip week after week with nothing in your account? It’s a particular kind of stress, quiet and grinding, that most people won’t admit to carrying.
That’s the question that came back to me when a mutual friend introduced me to Claudette Yarbrough at a neighborhood barbecue in San Jose last February. Our friend had mentioned, almost in passing, that Claudette was going through something with the IRS. When I approached her near the grill, she was polite but guarded. It took two follow-up conversations before she agreed to sit down with me properly.
A Financial Reset That Wasn’t Going According to Plan
Claudette Yarbrough is 39, a part-time yoga instructor who teaches six classes a week across two studios in the South Bay. On paper, her income looks stable — she earned roughly $74,000 in 2025 between her instruction fees, a handful of private clients, and some 1099 wellness consulting work. But income from multiple sources brings its own complications come tax season, and 2025 had not been a kind year.
In November 2025, she slipped on a wet floor at one of the studios where she teaches and strained two discs in her lower back. She filed a workers’ compensation claim immediately. By late December, the claim was denied — the studio’s insurance carrier argued she was an independent contractor, not an employee, and therefore not covered under their policy.
Then, on January 1, 2026, her health insurance plan changed. Her previous plan had covered two medications — one for a thyroid condition, one for chronic pain related to the back injury — at a combined cost of roughly $40 per month. The new plan placed both drugs in a higher tier. Overnight, her monthly prescription cost jumped to approximately $340 out of pocket.
On top of that, Claudette had been sending between $700 and $900 a month to family members — her mother in Stockton and a younger brother navigating a difficult stretch of unemployment. She has done this quietly for years. When I asked whether her friends knew about any of this, she shook her head firmly.
Why the Tax Refund Became the Centerpiece
When Claudette sat down with her tax preparer in late January 2026, the numbers pointed toward a refund of approximately $4,200. That figure — based on her self-employment deductions, home office expenses, and some education credits — felt like a lifeline. She filed electronically on January 27, 2026, and the IRS accepted the return the same day.
According to the IRS refund tracking page, most electronically filed returns with direct deposit are processed within 21 days. Claudette had direct deposit set up. She checked the Where’s My Refund tool every morning.
By February 17 — three weeks after filing — the status on Where’s My Refund had not moved past “Return Received.” It had never shifted to “Refund Approved.” Claudette called the IRS helpline. She waited on hold for one hour and forty minutes before a representative told her the return was under review and that a letter would be sent within four weeks.
That letter arrived on February 28. It was a CP05 notice — a standard IRS communication informing taxpayers that their return has been selected for review to verify income, tax withholding, and credits. No specific error was cited. The notice instructed her not to call for at least 60 days.
What the CP05 Notice Actually Means
The CP05 notice is one of the more commonly misunderstood IRS documents. It does not mean a taxpayer has done anything wrong. According to the IRS explanation of the CP05 notice, the agency selects returns for review through both automated filters and random sampling — the presence of multiple 1099 income sources, like those Claudette had from her consulting work, can sometimes trigger the process.
For Claudette, understanding what the notice meant intellectually did not reduce the pressure she was feeling practically. March rent was due. Her prescriptions had to be paid for. She had already skipped one refill in February to preserve cash flow, something her doctor had advised against.
The Steps Claudette Took While Waiting
Rather than calling the IRS repeatedly, Claudette took a few concrete steps during the review period. She documented her income sources carefully — gathering all three of her 1099-NEC forms, her bank statements, and receipts for the home office deductions she had claimed. Her tax preparer advised her to have everything organized in case the IRS requested documentation.
The Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent organization within the IRS, accepted Claudette’s hardship case in mid-March after she submitted documentation showing that the refund delay was affecting her ability to afford medically necessary prescriptions. Her case was assigned a case number on March 14, 2026.
The Refund Arrives — and What It Actually Covered
On April 16, 2026 — 79 days after Claudette filed — the $4,200 deposit hit her checking account. No additional documentation had been requested by the IRS. The CP05 review closed without any changes to her return, meaning the original refund amount was paid in full.
But the wait had cost her. She had borrowed $600 from a small line of credit at an interest rate of 18.9% to cover two months of prescriptions. She had reduced her monthly transfers to her mother by $250 for February and March. And the physical therapy she had delayed — partly waiting on the refund, partly because the workers’ comp denial was still under appeal — meant her back injury was not healing as quickly as her doctor had hoped.
When I asked Claudette what she wished she had done differently, she was quiet for a moment before answering. She said she wished she had known earlier about the Taxpayer Advocate Service. She had assumed, as many people do, that the IRS was a single monolithic system with no avenue for individual escalation.
What Claudette’s Story Reveals About Refund Timelines and Hardship
Claudette’s experience is not unusual in its mechanics — CP05 notices are issued to hundreds of thousands of taxpayers each filing season. What makes her case instructive is the compounding effect: a denied workers’ comp claim, a mid-year insurance change, and ongoing family financial obligations meant there was no buffer to absorb the delay.
For filers with straightforward W-2 income and standard deductions, the 21-day window is reliable most years. For self-employed workers with multiple income sources — the category that describes a growing share of the American workforce — the risk of a review flag is meaningfully higher, and the consequences of a delay are often more severe because there is no employer paycheck to fall back on.
The workers’ comp appeal is still pending as of this writing. Claudette told me she has hired an employment attorney who is working on a contingency basis to challenge the independent contractor classification. That outcome remains uncertain. What is certain is that the $4,200 refund, while welcome, arrived after the financial damage from its absence had already been done.
When I left her apartment in San Jose on a Tuesday afternoon in late March, Claudette walked me to the door and then said something that has stayed with me. She said she hoped that by talking to me, some other person sitting alone with a CP05 notice on their kitchen table would know they weren’t doing anything wrong, and that there was somewhere to turn.
It was the first time during our conversation that she seemed something close to at ease.
Vivienne Marlowe Reyes is a Senior Tax & Stimulus Writer at Check Day America covering IRS payment schedules, refund timelines, and the real financial experiences of American taxpayers.
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