The IRS filing deadline of April 15, 2026 is less than two weeks away, and for millions of lower-income working families, the window to claim the Child and Dependent Care Credit — worth up to $3,000 for a single qualifying dependent — is closing fast. For Bernice Kirby, that deadline nearly came and went a second time before anyone in her life said a word about it.
I first met Bernice at a neighborhood barbecue in the Northside section of Richmond last August, introduced by a mutual friend who had heard fragments of her situation between conversations about someone’s coleslaw recipe. She was quiet about her finances at first — guarded in the way people get when they’ve been burned enough times to stop expecting good news from the system. It took three follow-up calls and a coffee at a diner on Brook Road before she agreed to talk on the record.
A Shop Owner Running on Empty
Bernice Kirby is 35 years old and owns a small auto repair shop she has operated out of a leased bay in Richmond’s Northside since 2020. She employs one part-time helper and does most of the mechanical work herself. Her husband, Marcus, is home full-time as the primary caregiver for their seven-year-old son, Devin, who has a developmental disability requiring round-the-clock attention and specialized therapeutic programming.
The shop brought in roughly $51,000 in 2025 after expenses — not poverty, but not comfortable either, especially with Devin’s care costs running nearly $900 a month between therapy sessions and adaptive equipment not fully covered by their insurance plan.
The garnishment started in October 2024. A collections firm had obtained a civil judgment in Henrico County court against Bernice for a $4,200 medical bill — the tail end of an emergency room visit from 2019 that her then-insurance had only partially covered. She had made small payments for a while, then life with Devin’s escalating care needs took over, and the payments stopped. She didn’t know a judgment had been entered until the money was already gone from her first paycheck.
“I remember looking at my bank account and thinking something was wrong with the transfer,” Bernice told me, wrapping both hands around her coffee cup. “I called the bank and they said it was a garnishment order. I didn’t even know what that meant exactly. I thought you had to be notified first.”
The Garnishment and What Federal Law Actually Says
Under the Consumer Credit Protection Act, wage garnishment for consumer debts is capped at the lesser of 25% of disposable weekly earnings or the amount by which disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Bernice’s disposable weekly earnings averaged roughly $740 at the time — meaning the legal ceiling on her garnishment was approximately $185 per week, or around $800 per month at most.
The $380 monthly figure she was losing appeared to fall within that legal range. But what Bernice hadn’t been told — and what no one had volunteered — was that Virginia has its own wage garnishment exemptions for low-income earners that can reduce or fully halt garnishment when income falls below certain thresholds. She also didn’t know that her status as a small business owner, rather than a traditional employee, complicated how the garnishment had been structured in the first place.
By the time I spoke with Bernice in depth, in late January 2026, the collections firm had extracted approximately $5,700 from her over fourteen months — $1,500 more than the original debt judgment, once interest and legal fees were stacked on top. Her credit score, already at 574 when the garnishment began, had dropped further to 561.
The Tax Credits She Didn’t Know Were Hers
The conversation at that August barbecue had started because our mutual friend, a retired social worker named Gloria, had mentioned offhandedly that she suspected Bernice was leaving serious tax credits unclaimed. Gloria was right.
When Bernice walked me through her past two tax filings, both prepared by a national chain service she visited once a year, neither return had claimed the Child and Dependent Care Credit. Devin’s therapeutic daycare program — which costs $760 per month and is run by a licensed provider — is precisely the type of qualifying care expense the credit is designed to offset, according to IRS Topic No. 602.
For tax year 2025, the Child and Dependent Care Credit allows taxpayers to claim between 20% and 35% of qualifying dependent care expenses up to $3,000 for one qualifying individual. At Bernice’s adjusted gross income level, she likely qualified for the higher end of that percentage range — potentially a credit of $1,050 to $1,400 directly reducing her tax liability, not merely her taxable income.
On top of the care credit, Bernice’s income and family size made her a likely candidate for the Earned Income Tax Credit as well. For tax year 2025, a married couple filing jointly with one qualifying child and an adjusted gross income around $51,000 could receive an EITC of approximately $3,584, according to IRS EITC tables. Her prior two returns had not claimed it either.
“I told the tax lady what I made and she did the thing on her computer and that was it,” Bernice said, with a short, humorless laugh. “I didn’t know to ask about anything. I don’t speak that language.”
The Turning Point: An Amended Return and a Hard Conversation
In February 2026, Bernice filed amended returns for tax years 2023 and 2024 — a process that, she told me, felt less like relief and more like another bureaucratic maze she might fall through. The amended filings were prepared with help from a volunteer at a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) site near her shop, a free IRS-certified program she had never heard of before Gloria mentioned it.
The amended return for tax year 2023 alone showed a refund of $4,210 — nearly the exact amount of the original medical debt that had sparked the garnishment in the first place. Bernice told me she sat in her car for twenty minutes after the VITA volunteer showed her the number on the screen.
“I didn’t cry or anything,” she said. “I was just mad. I was mad that I paid someone to do my taxes and they didn’t tell me. And I was mad at myself for not knowing to push harder.” She paused. “And then I was just tired.”
What the Numbers Actually Looked Like — and What They Didn’t Fix
To be clear about what Bernice’s situation still looks like: a refund from amended returns does not automatically stop an active garnishment. The collections judgment in Henrico County remains on record. Her credit score, now at 559 as of March 2026, reflects two years of the underlying debt delinquency. The refund money, when it arrives, will help — but it arrives into a financial life that still carries real structural damage.
The total projected recovery across all three years approaches $13,000 — real money for a household running on roughly $51,000 before expenses. But Bernice was quick to put it in context when I asked how she felt about the outcome.
She had a few specific things she wanted other people in situations like hers to know — not advice, but observations from experience. She ticked them off matter-of-factly:
- VITA sites offer free, IRS-certified tax preparation for households earning under roughly $67,000 annually — find locations through IRS Free Tax Prep.
- Caregiving expenses for a child with a disability, when paid to a licensed provider, are generally qualifying expenses for the Dependent Care Credit.
- Amended returns using Form 1040-X can be filed for up to three prior tax years — the clock does not reset just because someone filed incorrectly the first time.
- A garnishment judgment in Virginia court can be contested, but the timeline is short and the burden falls on the debtor to act quickly.
I left the diner on Brook Road thinking about how many Bernices there are — people running legitimate small operations, paying what taxes they owe, raising children with extraordinary needs, and still falling through the information gap between what the tax code offers and what a rushed annual filing actually captures. The credits exist. The deadlines do not pause for people who don’t know to look.
As of early April 2026, Bernice’s tax year 2025 return has been filed. She is waiting on two amended refunds from prior years and managing the garnishment one month at a time. The debt, she told me, should be fully satisfied sometime in June — barring any additional fees the collections firm might tack on. After that, she’s focused on rebuilding her credit score and putting away something for Devin’s care for the year ahead. Small goals, stated plainly, with the skepticism of someone who has stopped expecting the process to be easy.
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