With the April 15, 2026 federal filing deadline now less than two weeks away, millions of taxpayers are watching the IRS Where’s My Refund tool refresh on their phones, hoping a status bar will move. For most early filers, it already has. For Irene Valdez, it didn’t move for 78 days — and the reasons why illuminate a process that can quietly devastate a small business owner’s cash flow without a single clear explanation from the agency responsible.
I first heard Irene’s voice on a Tuesday morning in early March. She’d called into a KFAI community radio segment on tax season financial pressure — one of those phone-in discussions where callers are screened but rarely followed up with. She mentioned, almost as an aside, that she owned a daycare, had been waiting since February for a refund she’d already spent in her head, and that her son was supposed to put down a college deposit by April 1. I pulled her contact information from the station’s producer that afternoon.
When I sat down with Irene Valdez at her Minneapolis daycare on a Wednesday two weeks later — twelve kids napping in the next room, a whiteboard behind her listing snack schedules in dry-erase marker — she had still not received her refund.
A Return Filed Right, Caught in a System That Wouldn’t Say Why
Irene, 35, has owned Little Spark Learning Center in north Minneapolis since 2020. The center employs four part-time staff and serves up to 18 children ages two through five. She files as a sole proprietor using Schedule C, which she told me she’s done every year since she opened. For the 2025 tax year, she expected her return to be straightforward.
She filed electronically on February 3, 2026. Her return included the Child Tax Credit for her 17-year-old son, a deduction for business-use square footage in her leased facility, and wages paid to her staff reported on Form W-3. Her calculated refund: $4,347.
The IRS typically issues refunds within 21 days for electronically filed returns, according to IRS filing season guidance. By February 24, Irene’s Where’s My Refund status had moved from “Return Received” to “Return Being Processed” — and then stopped. No further movement. No date. Just a status bar frozen at the second step.
Then, on March 2, a CP05 notice arrived in her mailbox. The letter informed her that the IRS was reviewing her return to verify income, tax withholding, and tax credits. It instructed her to do nothing — simply wait up to 60 days for the review to conclude. No phone number to call for updates. No explanation of what specifically triggered the review.
The Financial Pressure Already Building Before the Notice Arrived
What made the delay more than an inconvenience was everything stacked behind it. Irene’s husband works in construction, and his ex-partner — their teenager’s other parent — had not paid court-ordered child support in over eight months. Irene estimated that gap at roughly $4,800 in missed payments. She had not pursued enforcement through the county yet, partly because the legal process felt too expensive and time-consuming to manage while running a business.
Earlier that year, in October 2025, Irene had also slipped on an unmarked wet floor in the building’s shared entryway and strained her rotator cuff. She filed a workers’ compensation claim through her commercial landlord’s liability carrier. The claim was denied in December on the grounds that the entryway was a “common area” not covered under her policy’s terms. She told me she’d spent $340 on a consult with an attorney who advised her the case was winnable but would take 12 to 18 months.
Her son, Marcus, had been accepted to the University of Minnesota Duluth. The housing deposit — $350 — was due April 1. Irene’s credit score, which she described as hovering around 598 after a string of late payments during a slow stretch in 2023, meant a personal line of credit wasn’t a viable bridge. She covered March payroll — approximately $2,100 across her four part-time employees — by pulling from her business savings account, a reserve she said she tries never to touch.
What She Did When the 60-Day Clock Felt Too Long
By March 15, Irene told me she’d called the IRS general line three times. Each call resulted in a wait of between 47 and 90 minutes, followed by an automated message stating that her return was still under review and that no additional information was available. The representative she finally reached on the third call confirmed the CP05 hold but could not tell her when it would resolve.
A neighbor who’d dealt with a similar delay two years prior told her about the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent organization within the IRS. Irene submitted Form 911 — the Request for Taxpayer Advocate Service Assistance — on March 18, citing significant financial hardship: impending missed business obligations and a documented housing deposit deadline for a dependent.
The TAS assigned her a case advocate within five business days. The advocate contacted her on March 25 — Irene described it as the first time anyone from the government had actually called her back — and confirmed the review was nearly complete. The advocate also flagged something Irene had not seen coming.
The Refund Arrived — But Not in Full
On April 1, 2026 — the same morning I was scheduled to call Irene for a follow-up — she texted me first: “It came. Not all of it. Calling you in 10.”
Her bank account showed a direct deposit of $3,891. The IRS had applied a Treasury Offset of $456 against a balance it said she owed from her 2022 return — a year she’d filed late and believed was fully resolved. According to the offset notice she received alongside the deposit, the amount covered penalties and interest from that prior underpayment. She told me she had no memory of ever receiving a bill for it.
Marcus’s housing deposit was paid that afternoon. Irene also restocked her business savings account by $1,200, which she said covered roughly half of what she’d drawn during the delay. The remainder of the refund went toward catching up on a supplier invoice she’d deferred since January.
What Irene couldn’t fully resolve — at least not yet — was the $456 offset. Her TAS advocate told her she could request a copy of the 2022 account transcript through IRS Online Account to verify the balance. As of our last conversation, she hadn’t done it. “I know I should,” she told me. “I just need a week where I’m not putting out a fire first.”
That week, she acknowledged, might not come soon. The workers’ comp appeal is still open. Child support enforcement paperwork sits on her kitchen counter. And the next tax season — her son’s first year of college creating new education credit questions — is already nine months away.
Sitting across from Irene in that daycare classroom, watching her field three questions from a staff member between our interview segments, I thought about how much administrative labor the American tax system quietly offloads onto people who are already running businesses, raising families, and absorbing financial shocks that compound each other. Irene isn’t disorganized. She tracks her numbers better than most people I interview. She just ran into a process that gave her no information, no timeline, and no recourse — until she found one herself.
Her refund arrived 78 days after she filed. It was $456 short of what she expected. Her son is going to college. The daycare is still open. For Irene Valdez, that is, for now, enough.
Vivienne Marlowe Reyes is Senior Tax & Stimulus Writer at Check Day America. This story reflects one individual’s reported experience and does not constitute financial or tax advice.
Related: Someone Filed a Tax Return in His Name. The IRS Held His $3,200 Refund for 14 Months.
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