Roughly 25 million Americans leave tax credits unclaimed every year, according to estimates from the IRS — not because they don’t qualify, but because no one ever told them to look. For Deshawn Fulton, a 63-year-old union electrician from Charlotte, North Carolina, that number stopped being abstract on a cold Tuesday morning in January 2026.
I was covering free tax preparation clinics run through the VITA program — Volunteer Income Tax Assistance — when I met Deshawn. He was sitting in a plastic chair near the back of a church fellowship hall in west Charlotte, holding a manila folder thick with W-2s, insurance documents, and handwritten notes. He looked like a man who had done this before and expected nothing.
When I introduced myself and asked if he’d share his story, he paused for a long moment. “I’m not really a trusting person when it comes to money stuff,” he told me, almost apologetically. “I’ve been burned before.” He agreed to talk anyway.
A Year of Compounding Costs
By Deshawn’s accounting, the financial pressure had been building quietly since early 2024. He earns approximately $58,000 a year doing commercial electrical work through a Charlotte-area union — steady income, he said, but not the kind that absorbs shocks easily. Then the shocks arrived in rapid succession.
In March 2025, Deshawn filed a homeowner’s insurance claim after a burst pipe caused roughly $8,400 in water damage to his kitchen. The repair got done. The insurance did not survive. His carrier dropped him two months later, citing claim history. By June 2025, he had been forced into a new policy at $2,600 per year — up from the $1,100 he had been paying. That’s an increase of $1,500 annually for the same house, the same neighborhood, the same risk.
That cost increase sat on top of two existing obligations that were already straining his budget. Deshawn’s father, Harold, is 84 years old and lives with him. Harold has moderate dementia and requires in-home care assistance five days a week. Deshawn pays roughly $1,200 per month — $14,400 per year — for that coverage out of pocket. On top of that, he helps support his granddaughter Maya, age 6, whose mother works two jobs and relies on Deshawn to cover after-school care. That runs him another $800 per month, or $9,600 per year.
When I added those numbers up with him at the clinic table, the total was stark: approximately $26,500 in annual care and insurance costs, against a gross income of $58,000. After taxes, that left very little room for anything else.
Why He’d Never Claimed These Credits Before
Deshawn had filed his own taxes for years, using a basic software program he bought at a discount store. He claimed the standard deduction, reported his W-2 income, and called it done. He wasn’t aware that his situation — a dependent parent with care expenses and a granddaughter he financially supported — might open the door to credits he hadn’t touched.
Part of this, he said, was distrust. Years ago, Deshawn had paid a tax preparer who made errors on his return that resulted in a notice from the IRS and months of back-and-forth correspondence. “After that, I figured I was better off doing it myself and keeping it simple,” he explained. “Simple means you don’t mess up. But simple also means you leave money on the table, I guess.”
The VITA clinic changed that calculation. The IRS-certified volunteer who reviewed Deshawn’s documents identified two credits he had not been claiming: the Credit for Other Dependents, which can apply to qualifying relatives like an elderly parent who meets income and support tests, and the Child and Dependent Care Credit, which can apply to care expenses for a qualifying child or dependent while the taxpayer works.
What the Clinic Actually Found
Deshawn’s situation was more complicated than a simple checkbox exercise. The volunteer spent nearly 90 minutes reviewing his documentation, asking about Harold’s income (limited Social Security of roughly $980 per month), Deshawn’s total financial support for his father’s household expenses, and the specific structure of his arrangement with Maya’s after-school care provider.
According to the IRS’s guidance on the Child and Dependent Care Credit, taxpayers may be able to claim a percentage of qualifying care expenses — up to $3,000 for one qualifying person — if those expenses allow them to work. Deshawn’s payments for Maya’s after-school care potentially qualified, depending on several conditions the volunteer carefully verified.
The Credit for Other Dependents — sometimes called the Family Tax Credit — offers up to $500 for each qualifying dependent who isn’t a qualifying child for the Child Tax Credit. For Deshawn, his father Harold was the focus of that review. The volunteer walked through the IRS dependent tests: relationship, gross income limit, support provided, and residency. Harold met the criteria.
The preliminary estimate from the clinic: Deshawn was likely looking at a combined credit value in the range of $700 to $900, depending on final verification of his care expenses and adjusted gross income. That’s not a life-changing sum, he acknowledged. But it wasn’t nothing, either — not when every dollar was already spoken for.
The Regret Underneath the Relief
Not every part of this story resolves cleanly. Deshawn’s tax situation going forward looked better — but backward, the math was harder to absorb. If he had claimed the Credit for Other Dependents in 2023 and 2024 as well, he might have recovered $1,000 or more that he simply didn’t know to ask for. The IRS generally allows amended returns for up to three years from the original filing deadline, a fact the clinic volunteer mentioned, and which Deshawn wrote down carefully in his notepad.
Whether he pursues amended filings is his decision to make with professional guidance. But as we talked, I could see him doing the quiet arithmetic — calculating not just what he found, but what he missed, and why.
The insurance situation, Deshawn made clear, was its own ongoing wound. He had appealed to his original carrier after being dropped, but the company stood firm. He had called three others before landing on his current policy, and even that felt precarious. “They can drop you again,” he said flatly. “That’s the part nobody tells you. You pay the premium and think you’re covered, but they can just decide you’re not worth the risk.”
What Deshawn Took Home — and What He’s Still Carrying
By the time Deshawn’s session at the clinic wrapped up that morning, he had a completed return ready for review, documentation flagged for the credits he was claiming, and a sheet of notes about the amended return process for prior years. The volunteer had also connected him with a local nonprofit that offers one-on-one financial counseling — something he said he might consider, though his distrust of institutions hasn’t fully dissolved.
His estimated federal refund for tax year 2025: approximately $840, incorporating the credits the clinic identified. It was more than he expected walking in. It was less than the gap his insurance jump had created. Both things were true at once.
When I walked out with him into the gray January morning, he was quiet for a moment. Then he mentioned that his father had a doctor’s appointment that afternoon and he needed to be home by two. The to-do list hadn’t changed. The care hadn’t gotten cheaper. But the numbers, at least for now, were slightly less brutal than they’d been when he walked in.
According to the IRS’s VITA program page, free tax prep sites like the one where I met Deshawn are available to households earning roughly $67,000 or less per year. They’re staffed by IRS-certified volunteers and operate at community centers, libraries, and churches across the country — often invisible to the people who need them most.
Deshawn Fulton spent two years filing alone because he was afraid of getting burned again. That fear was earned. It was also expensive. Not because the system was generous — it largely wasn’t — but because a few hundred dollars here and there, missed year after year, adds up to something real when you’re already counting every dollar twice.
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