Have you ever done the math on what you actually keep after a year of doing everything right? Not just taxes — but the real number, after the hours, the sacrifices, the bills you pay for someone else because no one else will?
When I sat down with Monique Washington at a diner off Erdman Avenue in Baltimore this past February, she had a folder in front of her. Inside it: her 2025 W-2, a stack of receipts from a medical supply company, two printed IRS notices, and a handwritten note with a number circled in red ink. That number was $2,847. The amount of the federal tax refund she had been waiting on for eleven weeks.
A Life Built Around Someone Else’s Schedule
Monique Washington is 43 years old and has driven delivery routes for UPS out of the Baltimore hub for fourteen years. She is a union member, earns a solid hourly wage, and by most visible measures looks like someone who has her finances under control. The folder on the table told a different story.
Her younger brother, Darnell, was 25 when a driver ran a red light and changed both their lives permanently. He sustained a traumatic brain injury and spinal damage that require daily assistance. Their mother passed in 2019. Their father followed in 2022. That left Monique — the only one left.
Darnell receives SSDI — Social Security Disability Insurance — and is enrolled in Maryland Medicaid. But as Monique explained to me, those programs cover the baseline. They do not cover the accessible van she leases to transport him to appointments. They do not cover the specialized pressure-relief cushions his occupational therapist recommends. They do not cover the overnight aide she occasionally brings in so she can work a Saturday shift without leaving him alone.
She estimates she spent approximately $14,200 out of her own pocket on Darnell’s supplemental care in 2025. She did not say that number with anger. She said it the way you say the weather — as a fact you have already accepted.
Filing Taxes as a Caregiver: What the Forms Don’t Tell You
Monique filed her 2025 federal return on January 31, 2026 — the first day the IRS began accepting returns. She used a tax preparer she has trusted for years, a woman who works out of a storefront on Belair Road. Monique claimed Darnell as a qualifying relative dependent, which made her eligible for the Credit for Other Dependents — a nonrefundable credit worth up to $500 under current tax law.
She also claimed a portion of the medical and dental expense deduction under Schedule A. To qualify, unreimbursed medical expenses must exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income, per IRS Topic 502. Given her income level and the volume of expenses she documented, her preparer confirmed she cleared that threshold — which contributed meaningfully to her total refund of $2,847.
Monique told me she was counting on that refund to cover a standing order of specialized medical supplies — a catheter kit and positioning wedges — that she had been deferring since November. “I had it planned,” she said. “File in January, get the refund by mid-February, place the order. That was the plan.”
Eleven Weeks of Waiting and One Notice That Changed Everything
By February 15, the IRS Where’s My Refund tool showed her return as “received.” By February 28, still no deposit. She called the IRS helpline. After a 47-minute hold, an agent told her the return had been flagged for identity verification and that she should expect a CP05 notice in the mail.
The CP05 notice arrived at Monique’s house on March 4. The notice date — which is what triggers the 60-day review window according to the IRS — was February 28. That meant she was potentially looking at late April before the review concluded. “I just stared at that letter,” she told me. “Eleven weeks of waiting for money I already earned.”
What made the wait harder was that Monique had no clear reason why she was flagged. Her income was stable and consistent. She had filed with the same preparer for eight years. She suspected the medical deductions drew scrutiny — large Schedule A claims sometimes trigger additional review, though the IRS does not publicly disclose its specific selection criteria.
The Refund Arrived — But the Resolution Was Complicated
On April 17, 2026 — 77 days after she filed — Monique’s refund deposited into her checking account. The full $2,847 arrived without reduction, which meant the IRS completed its review and found nothing requiring adjustment. No additional notices followed.
She placed the medical supply order the same afternoon. The supplies arrived within five days. By any transactional measure, the story ended fine.
But Monique did not describe it as fine. When I asked her how she felt after the deposit finally arrived, she paused for a long moment before answering. “Relieved, yeah. But also just — tired. Like, that’s it? Eleven weeks and then it just shows up like nothing happened?”
The Larger Cost Nobody Tallies
The $2,847 refund covered the supplies. What it did not cover — and what no tax form can capture — is the cost Monique has been accumulating in a different ledger. She has not contributed to her 401(k) in three years. She cannot request a shift change or a route transfer because her schedule is built around Darnell’s aide drop-off times. She has not taken a full week away from Baltimore since 2020.
According to the Family Caregiver Alliance, roughly 53 million Americans provide unpaid or partially compensated care to a family member with a disability or chronic illness. Many, like Monique, absorb significant personal financial costs that are only partially offset by tax provisions — and only when those provisions are properly documented and claimed.
The tax code does provide some recognition of her situation. Beyond the Credit for Other Dependents and Schedule A deductions, caregivers who pay for in-home help may qualify for the Dependent Care FSA or the Child and Dependent Care Credit under specific circumstances. But navigating those provisions requires time, documentation, and access to a competent tax preparer — none of which are guaranteed for someone working Monique’s hours.
When I mentioned that the Dependent Care Credit might apply to some of the overnight aide costs she was paying, Monique looked up from her coffee. “Nobody told me that,” she said. “Nobody told me that at all.” She wrote it down on the back of the CP05 notice envelope. Whether it applies to her specific situation is something only her preparer can determine — but the fact that it came up in a diner and not in a tax office says something about who these provisions actually reach.
What Monique’s Story Actually Means
I left that diner on Erdman Avenue with a lot of notes and one clear impression: Monique Washington is not a person who feels sorry for herself. She would not frame her own story as a crisis. She is managing. She is doing what she decided to do when her parents died and her brother needed her.
But managing and thriving are not the same thing, and the gap between them is often invisible in the numbers. A $2,847 refund that takes 77 days to arrive does not sound like a catastrophe — until you understand it was supposed to pay for medical equipment for a man who cannot advocate for himself, and that the woman waiting for it has not had a week off in six years.
The IRS eventually released Monique’s money without asking her for a single piece of the documentation she had carefully assembled. The folder is still on her kitchen table. “I keep it there,” she told me, “just in case they come back.”
They have not. The supplies arrived. Darnell is stable. Monique will be back on her route tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. And she still has not started contributing to her retirement account.
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