Roughly 20 percent of eligible workers who qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit never claim it — leaving an estimated $6 billion in refundable credits uncollected every single year, according to the IRS. Malik Dupree, a 34-year-old registered nurse in Columbus, Ohio, almost became one of those statistics.
I first heard about Malik in late February 2026, through a manager at a mid-sized credit union on the east side of Columbus. She mentioned, carefully and without specifics, that a member had come in asking about hardship deferral options on a small personal loan — and that his situation was more complicated than it looked on paper. She thought his story was worth telling. After a brief introduction over email, Malik agreed to sit down with me at a diner near his apartment on a Tuesday morning before his afternoon nursing shift.
He arrived on time, carrying a folder stuffed with printed bank statements and two IRS notices still in their envelopes. He set them on the table without being asked. That told me a lot about him before he said a single word.
Two Incomes, One Safety Net, and a Spreadsheet That Couldn’t Lie
Malik has worked as a registered nurse at a large hospital system in Columbus since 2017. His base nursing salary in 2025 was approximately $43,200 — a figure that sounds stable until you understand what he was doing with it. For the past three years, he has been sending between $800 and $900 every month to his younger brother Darius, now 21, who is enrolled as a full-time junior at Ohio State University.
“Darius doesn’t have parents who can do this,” Malik told me, his voice matter-of-fact. “So I do it. That’s just what it is.” Their parents separated years ago, and neither has been in a position to contribute to Darius’s tuition or living costs. Malik became the de facto financial anchor of his family before he turned 30.
To supplement his nursing income, Malik launched a mobile phlebotomy and health screening service in 2022 — drawing blood at corporate wellness events, senior centers, and health fairs around central Ohio. In 2023, that business brought in approximately $22,000 in gross revenue. By 2024, it had dropped to $8,400, partly because a larger national wellness company undercut local operators on corporate contracts. In 2025, revenue fell further to just over $6,100.
The math was brutal and Malik knew it. His total 2025 income — nursing salary plus business revenue — came to roughly $49,300 before deductions. After sending approximately $10,600 to Darius across the year, covering his own rent, utilities, and loan payments, and absorbing the losses from his struggling business, he told me he finished 2025 with less than $400 in his savings account.
The IRS Letter That Upended His Filing Plans
Malik had filed his own taxes for years using a popular online software platform. He considered himself careful and organized — the folder of documents on the diner table was evidence enough. But in January 2026, he received a CP2000 notice from the IRS, a letter the agency sends when income reported by third parties doesn’t match what appears on a filed return.
The discrepancy was relatively small — a 1099-NEC from a corporate client he had forgotten to include, totaling $1,340. But the notice arrived with a proposed balance due of $312 in additional tax plus a potential accuracy-related penalty. For someone with $400 in savings, that number carried real weight.
He went to the credit union not to dispute the IRS notice, but to ask whether he could defer a $2,200 personal loan payment while he sorted things out. The branch manager, familiar with local tax assistance resources, asked him a few questions about his situation. When Malik mentioned his brother’s enrollment at Ohio State and the monthly support payments, she paused and suggested he speak with a certified tax professional before doing anything else. She believed he might be leaving money behind.
What a Tax Professional Found in 45 Minutes
Malik booked an appointment with a certified public accountant who operates through a volunteer tax assistance network affiliated with a Columbus nonprofit. The session lasted 45 minutes. What emerged changed the entire picture of Malik’s 2025 return.
The first issue was dependency status. Because Malik had provided more than half of Darius’s total financial support in 2025 — including the $10,600 in direct payments plus covering Darius’s share of a family phone plan — Darius potentially qualified as Malik’s dependent under IRS rules for a qualifying relative, even though Darius had some part-time income of his own. The CPA flagged this carefully, noting Darius’s income would need to fall below the 2025 threshold of $5,050 to satisfy the gross income test. Darius had earned approximately $4,800 from a part-time job. He cleared the threshold — barely.
With Darius established as a potential dependent, two significant credits came into view. The first was the Earned Income Tax Credit. For a single filer with one qualifying dependent and an adjusted gross income in Malik’s range, the 2025 EITC was approximately $2,195, according to the IRS EITC tables. Malik had not claimed it on his original return.
The second was the American Opportunity Tax Credit. Because Darius was in his third year of college and Malik was paying a portion of his qualified education expenses — tuition and required fees — Malik may have been eligible to claim up to $2,500 in AOTC credits, of which up to 40 percent is refundable even if no tax is owed. The CPA identified approximately $6,200 in qualified education expenses that Malik had helped cover, potentially unlocking the full credit amount.
The Amended Return and the Long Wait
Filing an amended return on Form 1040-X is not fast. The IRS typically processes paper-filed amended returns within 16 to 20 weeks. Malik’s CPA submitted his amended 2025 return in early March 2026. As of the morning I met him, he was still waiting.
The CP2000 notice, meanwhile, had been responded to in writing by his CPA — acknowledging the missing 1099 income and requesting an abatement of the accuracy-related penalty given the circumstances. That response was also pending.
What struck me sitting across from Malik was how little bitterness he carried toward the process. He was frustrated, clearly — but his frustration was directed inward, at himself, for not knowing what he didn’t know. “I thought I was being responsible by doing my own taxes,” he told me. “I had no idea that ‘responsible’ wasn’t the same as ‘correct.'”
The Regret Behind the Relief
Malik filed his own taxes the same way in 2023 and 2024. When I asked whether he had gone back to look at those years, he nodded slowly. His CPA had flagged that the same credits — or versions of them, depending on Darius’s enrollment and income in those years — might have been available then too. The statute of limitations for amended returns generally allows taxpayers to go back three years, according to IRS Topic 308.
Whether Malik will pursue amended returns for prior years is still undecided. The analysis would take time and cost money he’s measuring carefully. “Part of me wants to know,” he said. “Part of me doesn’t, because I can’t get that time back. And I’ll just be angry at myself for longer.”
The small business is still running, but Malik described it as being on life support. He has cut back on the marketing budget — which was already minimal — and is taking only the contracts that come to him directly through word of mouth. He hasn’t made a decision yet about whether to formally dissolve the LLC. “It was something I built,” he said. “I’m not ready to call it dead.”
When I asked how Darius was handling being the center of so much of this financial weight, Malik paused longer than he had at any other question. “He knows. He thanks me. He’s going to graduate in May 2027 and I’ll probably cry like an idiot.” He smiled for the first time since we sat down.
Before we wrapped up, Malik mentioned one more thing. If the amended return processes as his CPA expects, the refund would land around late June or early July 2026. He already knew what he was going to do with part of it — he planned to deposit $1,500 into a savings account and leave it there. “Even if it just sits there,” he said, “at least I’d sleep.”
For a man who described himself as a planner who loses sleep over variables he can’t control, that sounded less like a financial strategy and more like medicine.
Related: A Pittsburgh Nurse Counted on Her $3,412 Tax Refund to Survive COBRA — The IRS Held It for 79 Days
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