Roughly one in five eligible Americans fails to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit every single year, according to the IRS. That adds up to billions of dollars in unclaimed relief — money that sits in federal coffers instead of in the bank accounts of the people it was designed to help. I thought about that number for a long time after I first heard Tamika Zielinski’s voice on the radio.
It was a Tuesday morning in late January 2026. I was driving back from a source meeting and had a Des Moines AM station on low. A call-in segment about local benefit programs was wrapping up when a woman got on the line and said, quietly, “I own my own business, so everyone assumes I’m fine. I’m not fine.” She gave her first name — Tamika — and then the host moved on. I pulled over and called the station’s producer.
Two weeks later, I was sitting across from Tamika Zielinski at a laminate table in the back office of her repair shop on East University Avenue. The office smelled like motor oil and old coffee. A framed photo of her two adult children — Marcus, 29, and Deja, 26 — sat propped against a stack of invoices.
A Small Business Owner Who Felt Too Visible to Ask for Help
Tamika has run Zielinski Auto Care for eleven years. She took over the lease after her husband, Darnell, died of a heart attack in 2017, leaving her the shop, a mortgage she eventually had to walk away from, and two teenagers she raised to adulthood on her own. She is not someone who complains easily.
“People see the sign on the building and they think I’m doing okay,” she told me, folding her hands on the table. “They don’t see what it costs to keep the lights on.”
Her gross revenue in 2024 was approximately $94,000 — decent on paper. But after parts, equipment leases, liability insurance, and a part-time helper she pays $14 an hour, her net self-employment income came out to roughly $31,400. That puts her squarely in the range for EITC eligibility for a single filer with no dependents at home, where the IRS EITC tables show a maximum credit of $632 for tax year 2025.
That’s not a life-changing number. Tamika acknowledged that. But it’s also not nothing — and she hadn’t claimed it in any of the previous three years.
The Auto Loan That Became an Anchor
The missed tax credit was only part of the picture. In early 2023, Tamika had a strong quarter — her best in years — and made a decision she now regrets. She financed a 2021 Ram 1500 for $38,500, partly for the shop and partly, she admitted to me, because she wanted something that felt like progress.
“I’d been driving a 2009 Ford with two hundred thousand miles. I thought I earned it,” she said. She paused. “I thought the money would keep coming like that.”
It didn’t. Two major commercial accounts dropped her in late 2023 when a franchise service center opened nearby. Her monthly truck payment of $687 — at 9.4% interest — suddenly felt enormous against a leaner income. By the time I spoke with her in February 2026, she estimated she owed approximately $29,000 on a vehicle worth closer to $22,000, based on comparable listings she’d checked on her phone.
She had not missed a payment. She was proud of that. But making that payment every month meant she had contributed exactly $0 to any retirement account. At 53, with Social Security projections she’d looked up on the SSA’s online portal showing a monthly benefit of roughly $980 at age 67 based on her current earnings record, the math was genuinely frightening.
What She Didn’t Know About the Tax Credits She Qualified For
Tamika had been using a national tax preparation chain for her business returns since 2019. She paid between $340 and $420 each year for the service. In none of those years, she said, did anyone walk her through the EITC or the Retirement Savings Contributions Credit — known as the Saver’s Credit — which is available through the IRS for lower-income workers who contribute to a qualifying retirement account.
“They hand me a paper, I sign it, I write the check,” she told me. “I assumed they were finding everything.”
The Saver’s Credit is specifically designed for people in her income bracket. For a single filer earning under approximately $36,500 in 2025, the credit covers up to 50% of the first $2,000 contributed to an IRA or similar account — meaning a $2,000 contribution could generate a $1,000 tax credit, according to IRS guidance. Tamika had never contributed to an IRA and had never heard the Saver’s Credit mentioned by name.
The Turning Point — and Its Limits
When Tamika called into that radio show in January 2026, she was responding to a segment about Iowa’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, which provides free tax prep to individuals earning under $67,000 a year. She hadn’t called to share her story — she’d called to ask if VITA could handle self-employment returns. The host said she wasn’t sure. Tamika thanked her and hung up.
After I contacted her and we had our first conversation, she agreed to call the VITA hotline herself. She told me later that the volunteer coordinator confirmed her shop’s return qualified and scheduled her an appointment for early March.
The outcome was mixed. The VITA preparer identified that Tamika had likely qualified for the EITC in tax years 2022 and 2023 and walked her through the amended return process for 2022 — the last year still within the amendment window. The potential recovery: approximately $570. Not the amount that fixes a $7,000 negative equity gap on a truck loan. But something.
The 2023 amended return, she was told, was likely outside the recovery window because of how her original filing was submitted. That one stung. “That was probably another five hundred dollars just gone,” she said. “Because I trusted the wrong people with my taxes and didn’t know what questions to ask.”
What Tamika’s Story Reflects About a Larger Gap
The IRS estimates that the EITC lifts millions of working Americans out of poverty each year, but the participation problem among self-employed filers is well documented. Small business owners often assume their business status signals too much income, or they work with preparers who specialize in straightforward W-2 returns and don’t probe further.
Tamika’s situation — a sole proprietor with high gross revenue but thin margins, no employees on payroll, no employer-sponsored retirement plan — is common and genuinely underserved by the existing outreach infrastructure. VITA programs help, but awareness is uneven. Many people learn about them the same way Tamika did: by chance, on the radio, on a Tuesday morning.
When I last spoke with Tamika in late March 2026, she was still waiting on the amended return. She had decided against making an IRA contribution before the April 15 deadline — the $500 she would have needed to open an account felt too risky to pull from the shop’s operating account with spring parts orders coming due.
“Maybe next year,” she said. She said it the way people do when they’re not sure they believe it.
I drove back out to East University Avenue the afternoon before I filed this story. The shop was busy — two bays occupied, a customer waiting on a plastic chair by the door. Tamika was under a hood with a flashlight, her hair tucked under a shop cap. She gave me a wave without looking up.
The $570 refund, if it arrives, won’t rewrite her situation. The truck is still underwater. Retirement is still a blank page. But she knows the name of a credit she’d been leaving unclaimed for years, and she knows the number to call next January before she pays anyone $400 to miss it again. For now, that’s where things stand.
Related: Claiming Social Security at 62 Cost Me $312 a Month — The Permanent Penalty Nobody Warned Me About
Related: 2026 Tax Refund Delays Are Hitting Millions — The IRS Processing Backlog Nobody Is Talking About
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