The IRS is set to eliminate paper refund checks entirely by September 30, 2025 — a deadline that has already disrupted payment for an estimated 1.4 million filers this season, according to CNBC’s tax refund delay coverage. For most people, the shift to direct deposit sounds like a minor administrative change. For Doris O’Brien, it became the thread that unraveled four months of careful financial planning.
I met Doris on a Tuesday afternoon in late March at a CVS Pharmacy off South Tryon Street in Charlotte. I was waiting for a prescription when I overheard her at the consultation window, quietly asking the pharmacist about manufacturer assistance programs for her father’s blood pressure medication. She looked composed — blazer, lanyard still around her neck from work — but there was something in the way she rephrased the question twice that caught my attention. When she stepped away from the counter, I introduced myself and asked if she’d be willing to talk. She laughed a little. “Sure,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to say this out loud to someone who isn’t my dad.”
A Refund That Was Supposed to Cover the Roof
Doris O’Brien is 27, single, and works as a licensed clinical social worker for a nonprofit agency in Charlotte. She earns a solid salary — in the upper tier for her field — and by most external measures, her finances look orderly. But she is also the primary caregiver for her father, a 61-year-old retired machinist whose fixed income covers little beyond rent and groceries.
Late last year, a section of her father’s roof — a property she co-owns with him — began showing active water damage. Two contractors quoted the repair at between $6,800 and $8,400. Doris had been planning to use her federal tax refund as the first installment toward that cost. When she filed her return on February 11, 2026, the IRS Where’s My Refund tool showed her refund as accepted within 48 hours. She was expecting approximately $4,200 back.
Three weeks passed. Then five. The tracker still showed “processing.” On March 7, a letter arrived at her home. It was IRS Notice CP53E.
What the CP53E Notice Actually Means
The CP53E is a notice the IRS sends when it cannot deliver a refund by paper check — typically because the check was returned, the address was flagged, or the agency’s own systems rejected the disbursement during the paper check phaseout process. It instructs the taxpayer to provide updated banking information or an alternative delivery method. What it does not do is tell the taxpayer how long the delay will last.
Doris told me she had originally requested her refund by paper check — a habit from years of not fully trusting direct deposit after a banking error in 2022 wiped out three days of account access during a bill-pay cycle. “I just didn’t want to deal with another bank thing,” she told me. “A check felt like something I could hold.” The CP53E notice changed that calculation fast.
She submitted her direct deposit information through the IRS “Get My Payment” portal on March 10. As of our conversation on March 26, the tracker had updated to “refund approved” — but no deposit had landed in her account. The IRS tool was not showing an estimated deposit date.
The Workers’ Comp Denial That Made Everything Worse
The refund delay would have been a frustration in isolation. But Doris’s situation had another layer she hadn’t told many people about — including, she admitted to me, her closest friends.
In October 2025, while conducting a home visit for a client, Doris slipped on an unmarked wet floor in a transitional housing facility and injured her left knee. She filed a workers’ compensation claim through her employer’s carrier. In December, the claim was denied. The insurer’s stated reason: the injury occurred at a third-party location, not her employer’s premises, and her employer disputed whether the visit was within the formal scope of her documented job duties that day.
The out-of-pocket costs — an urgent care visit, an MRI, two physical therapy sessions before she stopped going — totaled approximately $2,300. She put it on a credit card. “I kept thinking the appeal would come through,” she said. “I’m still waiting on that, too.” She said it without self-pity, but she looked down at her coffee cup when she said it.
The Broader Picture: Refund Season Is Up, but Delays Are Real
Doris’s experience sits inside a paradox this filing season. Average refunds are running 10.9% higher than at the same point in 2025, according to IRS filing data reported by CNBC. President Trump has publicly described this as the “largest tax refund season of all time,” citing his legislative priorities. But the headline number doesn’t capture what happens when that refund gets stuck.
The IRS paper check phaseout — which formally ends September 30, 2025 — has created a processing gap for filers who requested checks and now must convert to electronic delivery mid-cycle. That transition is not seamless. Approximately 1.4 million filers have faced refund delays specifically tied to this shift, and for many, the CP53E notice is the first indication that anything has gone wrong.
For filers who requested paper checks and have now received CP53E notices, the agency’s guidance is to update banking information promptly. What the IRS has not clearly communicated to the public, advocates say, is that reprocessing after a CP53E response can take an additional four to six weeks — on top of however long the original delay has already run.
What Doris Is Doing Now — and What She Wishes She’d Known
When I met Doris at the pharmacy, she was asking about her father’s medication costs partly because she’d already moved $900 from her emergency fund to cover the partial roof tarp and materials. She had not told her father exactly why the full repair wasn’t scheduled yet. “He thinks the contractor is backed up,” she said. “Which — one of them actually is. So it’s not entirely wrong.”
Doris said the one thing she kept coming back to was how invisible this kind of stress is for people with stable-looking incomes. She earns enough that nobody would think to ask if she was struggling. Her employer’s HR department knows about the workers’ comp denial only in the most technical, procedural sense. Her coworkers see a social worker who has it together.
She did eventually reach a live IRS agent on her third call, who confirmed her direct deposit update had been received and that reprocessing was underway. No date was given. The agent could not tell her whether the additional processing time would be two weeks or six.
As of April 1, 2026 — the day I’m filing this story — Doris still has not received the deposit. She told me by text that the Where’s My Refund tool updated overnight to show an estimated date of April 9. She said she’ll believe it when she sees the number in her account. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she wrote. “I’ve learned not to plan around a date the IRS gives me.”
The roof contractor has her on the schedule for the third week of April, contingent on her deposit clearing. The workers’ comp appeal is still pending. Her father does not know the full picture. And Doris O’Brien, who spends her professional days helping other people fight bureaucracies that were never designed with them in mind, is doing the same thing quietly, after hours, for herself.
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