According to the IRS, more than $1 billion in federal tax refunds go unclaimed every year — not because people forgot to file, but because they didn’t know what they were entitled to. I think about that number often, but never more than when I sat down with Tamika Novak at a small table near the side entrance of a church fellowship hall in Memphis, Tennessee, on a cold Thursday morning in late February 2026.
I’d been introduced to Tamika by Pastor Derrick Hollins of New Cornerstone Baptist Church on South Parkway East. He mentioned her almost in passing during a conversation about how his congregation was absorbing the rising cost of groceries and utilities. He didn’t describe her as someone in crisis. “There’s a young woman here,” he said, “who’s just tired. Not angry. Not giving up. Just tired.” I called her the next evening, and she agreed to meet.
She showed up with a yellow legal pad. Not for show — she’d been going over her numbers again that morning.
A Budget Built on Overtime That No Longer Exists
Tamika Novak is 34, a licensed social worker employed by a nonprofit behavioral health agency in Memphis. Her base salary is $36,500 a year. For most of the three years before our meeting, overtime had made that number livable — not comfortable, but livable.
When I sat down with Tamika, she slid the legal pad across the table before I’d even asked a question. Rent for their two-bedroom apartment in Midtown Memphis: $975 a month. Utilities — electricity, gas, and internet — another $195. That’s $1,170 before food, gas, or her fiancé Marcus’s school fees. Marcus is working toward a master’s degree in public health at a state university, taking classes part-time while tutoring for roughly $750 a month.
Together, their household brought in approximately $3,850 a month before the cuts. It wasn’t a lot, but it was a plan. The overtime — roughly $400 a month, sometimes slightly more — was the difference between a budget that cleared and one that didn’t.
The Month the Overtime Stopped
In early September 2024, Tamika received a memo from her agency’s operations manager. Budget cuts driven by a reduction in state Medicaid reimbursement rates meant all non-emergency overtime would be suspended indefinitely, effective immediately.
“I read it three times,” she told me, pressing her coffee cup flat against the table with both hands. “I kept thinking I was misunderstanding something.” She wasn’t. Their household income dropped from approximately $3,850 to roughly $3,450 a month — a net loss of around $320 after taxes. On paper, that sounds like a small number. But Tamika’s budget had no margin built in to absorb it.
By October 2024, they were dipping into savings. By December, Tamika said she was paying bills on a rotation — utilities one week, groceries the next. Marcus took on an extra tutoring client. She started bringing lunch every day instead of buying it. Neither of them spoke much about the stress, she said. It became the air in the apartment.
“I felt embarrassed,” she admitted. “I work with families in real crisis every single day. But this quiet, creeping thing — where you’re technically okay but always one flat tire from not being okay? That’s its own kind of hard.”
A Folding Table, a Laptop, and a VITA Volunteer
Tax season arrived in early 2026, and Tamika was dreading it. Her prior-year refund had been about $380. She assumed that since her salary hadn’t formally changed — the overtime loss didn’t show up as a “change” in the payroll system — she’d get something similar, maybe less.
What she didn’t know was that her withholding situation had shifted in her favor.
Pastor Hollins had arranged for a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program — VITA — through a local community college to operate at the church every Saturday in February and March. VITA is an IRS-certified free tax preparation service available to households earning $67,000 or less, according to IRS.gov. Tamika had never heard of it. She showed up on a Saturday morning in late February with a manila folder of W-2s, a 1099 for Marcus’s tutoring income, and her legal pad.
The VITA volunteer, a retired accountant named Harold, spent about 45 minutes with her. He asked questions she didn’t immediately have answers to.
Harold had found two things. First, Tamika had been over-withheld on federal taxes throughout 2025 — her withholding was still calibrated to her prior year’s higher income, including overtime, and her agency’s payroll system hadn’t recalibrated after the overtime suspension. Second, her automatic 403(b) contributions of approximately $1,095 for the year potentially qualified her for the Saver’s Credit.
For Tamika, the 10% credit on her $1,095 in 403(b) contributions translated to approximately $109 in additional credit. Not life-changing on its own. But combined with the over-withholding refund, her total federal refund came to $1,347.
The Refund That Arrived in March
The direct deposit landed in Tamika’s account on March 12, 2026 — about three weeks after she filed. She sent me a text that morning. It said only: “It came.”
When we spoke again that week, she was measured about what the money meant. She didn’t celebrate. She sat down with her legal pad and figured out where it was going.
The remaining $347 went into their emergency fund, which she said now totaled $523. “I know some people get back $4,000, $5,000,” she told me. “For them I’m happy. But $1,347 was huge for me. It was air.” She paused. “And I almost didn’t file at all this year. I thought I wasn’t going to get anything.”
The overtime hasn’t come back. As of late March 2026, her agency is still operating under the same budget constraints tied to Medicaid reimbursement rates. Marcus has one semester left before finishing his degree, and they’re hoping his job prospects will change the household math by fall. But that’s a hope, not yet a plan.
What the Numbers Don’t Capture
There’s something particular about talking to Tamika Novak. She doesn’t ask for sympathy, and she doesn’t frame her situation as exceptional. She spends her workdays navigating broken systems on behalf of people in far more acute distress — and that context shapes how she talks about herself. She keeps the emotional volume low, almost consciously.
“I know I’m not in crisis,” she told me toward the end of our conversation, folding her legal pad in half. “I know what crisis looks like. But there’s this gray zone where you’re working full-time, you’re doing everything right, and you’re still just… hanging on. And nobody really talks about that.”
What changed for Tamika wasn’t a windfall or a legislative breakthrough. It was a Saturday morning, a folding table, and a retired accountant who asked the right questions. She left knowing what she was owed — which, she said, felt different from the money itself.
“I just didn’t know what I didn’t know,” she said, gathering her things as we wrapped up. “Harold knew. And he didn’t make me feel stupid for not knowing. That matters.”
I drove back across the bridge into downtown Memphis thinking about the billion dollars sitting in the Treasury every year — and all the Tamikas who never made it to a folding table on a Saturday morning.
Vivienne Marlowe Reyes is Senior Tax & Stimulus Writer at American Relief. This article is reported narrative journalism and does not constitute financial or tax advice. Readers should consult a qualified tax professional for guidance on their specific situation.
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