A 59-Year-Old Security Guard’s Small Business Was Failing. Then He Discovered He’d Been Missing Tax Credits for Years

Roughly 20 percent of eligible Americans never claim the Earned Income Tax Credit — leaving an estimated $7 billion on the table each year, according to the IRS. I didn’t know that statistic when I walked into a CVS Pharmacy on Bardstown Road in Louisville, Kentucky, on a rainy Tuesday in January 2026. But I thought about it for weeks after I met Travis Andersen.

Travis was standing at the pharmacy counter, methodically unfolding a printed sheet he’d pulled from his jacket pocket. He was asking the technician whether the store participates in any prescription assistance programs — specifically for a blood pressure medication that had jumped to $87 a month after a formulary change. The technician looked sympathetic but uncertain. I waited behind him, listening, and something about the quiet precision of the question — the folded paper, the careful phrasing — made me introduce myself when he stepped aside.

He agreed to talk. We sat in the pharmacy’s small waiting area for nearly forty minutes, and what started as a conversation about drug costs turned into something far larger.

A Plan Built on Two Incomes That Kept Shrinking

Travis Andersen has worked in private security for eleven years. His current position — overnight shift supervisor at a logistics facility in the Outer Loop area of Louisville — pays $19.40 an hour. That works out to roughly $40,300 a year before taxes, which sounds manageable until you understand the rest of the picture.

He went back to school in his late forties and completed a graduate degree in organizational leadership from a small regional university in 2019. The degree cost him $38,000 in federal student loans. He took it out believing a management certificate and a graduate credential would open a door into corporate training or human resources. It didn’t — at least not yet. As of February 2026, his remaining loan balance sits at approximately $31,700.

“I was methodical about it,” Travis told me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “I ran the numbers. I said, this degree pays for itself in four years if I land the right role. That was seven years ago and I’m still running the same calculation.”

The second income stream — the one Travis had planned to grow — is a small security consulting operation he registered as an LLC in Jefferson County in 2021. He advises small retail businesses on camera placement, access control, and staff safety protocols. At its peak in 2022, the business brought in just over $26,000 in gross revenue. By 2025, that number had collapsed to approximately $8,400 — a decline he attributes to three clients closing their doors and two others cutting discretionary vendor contracts.

He is remarried and has a blended family: two adult children from his first marriage and a teenage stepson and stepdaughter from his wife Renata’s side. The household, Travis explained, runs on a shared budget that leaves very little room. “We don’t waste money,” he said. “But there are six people who depend on things functioning.”

The Tax Credit He Didn’t Know He Could Claim

Travis had been filing his own taxes using a commercial software platform for years. He is not careless about it — he keeps a dedicated folder for receipts, tracks mileage for his consulting business, and files well before the April deadline. But there was a gap in his knowledge that had been costing him real money.

He had never claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit. His assumption — one I’ve heard from other self-employed workers in similar income brackets — was that having a small business with inconsistent income, combined with his W-2 wage, would disqualify him or trigger an audit. According to the IRS EITC eligibility guidelines, self-employment income does not automatically disqualify a filer — it is included in the calculation of earned income.

When Travis connected with a free tax preparation volunteer through the IRS’s VITA program — Volunteer Income Tax Assistance, which serves filers earning roughly $67,000 or less — a certified preparer reviewed his prior three years. The findings were significant.

• Tax year 2022: Travis was eligible for approximately $1,900 in EITC based on his household income and number of qualifying dependents.
• Tax year 2023: Eligibility dropped slightly due to a higher combined income that year — an estimated $1,600 credit unclaimed.
• Tax year 2024: With the business declining, his combined household earned income fell into a range that made him eligible for approximately $1,900 again.

The IRS allows amended returns for up to three years back. Travis filed amended returns for 2022 and 2023 in February 2026. He expects a combined refund of approximately $3,500 from those two years — money that, he told me, will go directly toward reducing his student loan principal.

Navigating the Amended Return Process at 59

Filing an amended return is not complicated in principle, but Travis told me it was anxiety-inducing in practice. He is someone who loses sleep over variables he cannot control — his words — and the idea of reopening prior years with the IRS ran counter to every instinct he had built around staying invisible to scrutiny.

“My VITA preparer walked me through it step by step,” Travis said. “She showed me exactly what lines were changing and why. I still didn’t sleep great the night I submitted it, but at least I understood what I was doing.”

The VITA session also surfaced a second issue. Travis had been deducting vehicle expenses for his consulting business using the standard mileage rate, but he had not been tracking miles consistently. He estimated 2,200 miles in 2024 for business purposes — conservative, he acknowledged, given the actual driving he does for site visits. At the 2024 IRS standard mileage rate of 67 cents per mile, that represents a deductible expense of approximately $1,474. He had claimed only $800.

What Changed — and What Didn’t

When I followed up with Travis by phone in late March 2026, the first amended return had been processed. The IRS had confirmed a refund of $1,887 for tax year 2022. The 2023 amendment was still pending. He had applied the 2022 refund as a lump-sum payment against his student loan — bringing his balance to approximately $29,800.

It is not a dramatic reversal. Travis was honest about that. The student loan is still there. The consulting business has not recovered. He is still working overnight shifts at 59 years old with a graduate degree that hasn’t opened the door he wanted it to open.

The prescription assistance question that started our conversation also moved forward. The Extra Help program — formally the Low Income Subsidy under Medicare Part D — is available to individuals with limited income and resources, and outreach workers confirmed Travis may become eligible as he approaches 65. For now, his pharmacist connected him with a manufacturer patient assistance program that reduced his blood pressure medication cost to $18 a month.

The Regret That Stays With Him

Travis does not frame his story as a success. He frames it as a correction — and a late one. What sits with him is not the money recovered but the years it went unclaimed. By his own rough estimate, if he had understood his EITC eligibility when his consulting business first launched in 2021, he may have recovered closer to $8,000 to $9,000 over the intervening years. That money, applied to principal, would have materially shortened his loan repayment timeline.

“I’m 59,” he told me near the end of our follow-up call. “I don’t have the luxury of a long runway. Every dollar I left on the table is a dollar I worked for that I just… gave back for no reason.”

He is not bitter about it. But the methodical planner in him — the man who printed out information sheets before going to the pharmacy — is still processing the gap between how carefully he thought he was managing his finances and how much was slipping through anyway.

What I keep coming back to, sitting with my notes from that CVS waiting room, is how ordinary Travis’s situation is. He is not financially reckless. He is not uneducated. He has a graduate degree and keeps meticulous folders. The credits he missed are not obscure loopholes — the EITC is one of the largest federal anti-poverty programs in the country. And still, the complexity of combining self-employment income with W-2 wages was enough to push him to the wrong side of a $5,400 decision for three consecutive years.

He plans to return to the VITA site again before the April 2026 deadline. This time, he told me, he’s bringing a full mileage log.

Related: He Fell on the Job at 61, Got Denied Workers’ Comp, Then Discovered His Identity Had Been Stolen

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