Most people assume that if you file your taxes early, accurately, and electronically, the IRS will process your refund in the standard 21 days. That assumption, it turns out, can be dangerously wrong — especially when your return involves a combination of credits and deductions that the IRS’s automated systems flag for closer review.
When I sat down with Linda Chen-Ramirez, 58, at a coffee shop near her office in San Jose, California, she had her laptop open to a spreadsheet before I even ordered. She is a senior accountant at a mid-size tech firm, the kind of person who tracks her household finances in pivot tables and sets calendar reminders for estimated tax deadlines. She filed her 2025 federal return on February 3, 2026. Her refund of $4,247 did not arrive until April 7 — 63 days later, and only after she submitted supplemental documentation in response to an IRS review letter.
A Financial Life Built on Recovery
Linda’s tax situation in 2025 was complicated in the way that life after a major disruption tends to be. She divorced at 49, losing roughly $190,000 in marital assets through the settlement. She has spent the years since rebuilding methodically — maxing out her 401(k) every year, including the catch-up contribution available to workers 50 and older.
For 2025, that meant contributing the IRS-allowed maximum of $31,000 to her employer’s 401(k) plan: the base limit of $23,500 plus the $7,500 catch-up contribution for workers aged 50 and above, according to IRS retirement contribution guidance. She does this not from a place of comfort, she told me, but from a place of anxiety.
On top of her retirement contributions, Linda faces two significant ongoing costs that shape her entire financial life. Her daughter, Maya, is a sophomore at UC Davis, where annual in-state tuition and fees currently run approximately $15,600 per year. And her mother, 81, lives in an assisted living facility in Fremont, California, where the monthly fee is $5,600 — or $67,200 annually.
What She Filed — and Why the IRS Noticed
Linda’s 2025 federal return was prepared using professional tax software, not by a CPA — a decision she now reconsiders. Her adjusted gross income for 2025 was approximately $138,400, after accounting for her 401(k) contributions. She chose to itemize deductions using Schedule A rather than take the $15,000 standard deduction available to single filers in 2025.
Her itemized deductions included the $10,000 SALT cap for state and local taxes, roughly $9,400 in mortgage interest on her San Jose condo, and — the figure that drew IRS scrutiny — approximately $57,000 in qualified medical expenses for her mother’s assisted living care. Under IRS rules, unreimbursed medical expenses exceeding 7.5 percent of AGI are deductible on Schedule A, according to IRS Topic 502. At her AGI of $138,400, that threshold was $10,380. The deductible portion of her mother’s care was therefore approximately $56,620.
She also claimed a Lifetime Learning Credit of $2,000 for Maya’s tuition at UC Davis — the maximum credit available under that program, which covers 20 percent of the first $10,000 in qualified education expenses with no restriction on the student’s year of school, according to IRS guidance on the LLC.
The Silence, Then the Letter
For the first three weeks after filing, Linda’s Where’s My Refund status showed “Return Received” and then “Processing.” She told me she checked it almost every morning, a habit she recognized as counterproductive but couldn’t stop.
On March 4, 2026 — 29 days after filing — a CP05 notice arrived in Linda’s mailbox. The CP05 is a notice the IRS sends when it needs additional time to review a return and verify income, credits, and deductions. It does not mean an audit has been initiated. It asks the taxpayer to wait, typically 60 days from the notice date, before taking any action.
Linda, being an accountant, did not wait. She called the IRS Taxpayer Assistance line, was placed on hold for 47 minutes, and was told by a representative that her return was under income and deduction verification. The representative could not provide a more specific timeline.
The Documentation Push That Moved the Needle
Linda told me the turning point was a decision she made on her own: rather than waiting out the full 60-day CP05 window, she compiled and mailed a proactive response on March 19. The package was 38 pages and included monthly invoices from her mother’s Fremont assisted living facility, bank statements showing the payments, her mother’s physician’s certification of medical necessity — required to qualify assisted living costs as deductible medical expenses — and the Form 1098-T issued by UC Davis confirming Maya’s qualified tuition payments.
The refund arrived 19 days after she submitted the documentation — faster than the typical IRS processing window for correspondence responses, which the agency generally estimates at 30 to 60 days. Linda believes the physician’s certification was the critical document, since the IRS requires that assisted living costs qualify under a specific definition: the facility must provide the resident with at least two activities of daily living (ADLs) such as eating, bathing, or dressing, or the resident must require supervision due to cognitive impairment, as outlined in IRS Publication 502.
What the $4,247 Actually Meant
When the deposit appeared in Linda’s checking account on the morning of April 7, she told me her first emotion was not relief. It was exhaustion.
The $4,247 went directly toward Maya’s spring quarter balance at UC Davis. Linda had been covering tuition from her paycheck and a small savings buffer, but the refund allowed her to replenish the buffer rather than drawing it down further. Her mother’s assisted living facility does not accept delayed payments, so those costs had continued uninterrupted throughout the waiting period.
Linda said she plans to hire a CPA for her 2026 return — not because she doubts her own skills, but because having a credentialed professional’s name on a return that involves large Schedule A medical deductions may reduce the likelihood of a correspondence review. Whether that logic holds is something she acknowledged she can’t know for certain.
What she does know, she told me as we wrapped up, is that the system treated her correctly — eventually. The documentation requirements were legitimate. The IRS followed its own procedures. But for a 58-year-old woman trying to fund a college education, pay for her mother’s care, and recover a decade of lost retirement savings, two months of uncertainty on a $4,247 refund was not an abstraction. It was 63 days of checking a government website every morning before she left for work.
I left the coffee shop thinking about the gap between financial literacy and financial security. Linda Chen-Ramirez knows more about taxes than almost anyone she encounters. That knowledge helped her navigate the delay efficiently. It did not protect her from experiencing it.
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