The deadline for filing a 2025 federal tax return is April 15, 2026 — and for millions of low-income workers, especially those in the gig economy, that date arrives with dread rather than anticipation. Many assume they owe money, skip the process, and lose refundable credits worth thousands of dollars in the process. Estelle Guzman was almost one of them.
I met Estelle on a Tuesday morning in late March at a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) clinic operating out of a community center in Boise’s West End neighborhood. She was sitting in a plastic chair near the sign-in table, her two-year-old balanced on her knee, scrolling through something on her phone with the focused intensity of someone trying not to make eye contact with the room. When the volunteer coordinator called her name, she looked up like she’d been caught at something.
After she finished with the tax preparer, I introduced myself. She agreed to talk. We sat at a folding table near the exit, and for the next hour, Estelle Guzman told me what the last fourteen months of her life had actually looked like.
A Family Budget That Was Already Past Its Breaking Point
Estelle has been driving for Uber since 2021. She works roughly 40 hours a week across mornings and evenings, threading around her husband Marcos’s part-time restaurant schedule so one of them is always home with their kids — a seven-year-old named Dani and a two-year-old named Theo. In 2025, Estelle netted approximately $31,400 from the platform after expenses. Marcos brought in around $13,800. Combined, their household income sat at just over $45,000 — above the federal poverty line for a family of four, but not by nearly enough to absorb what came next.
The first blow landed in early 2025 when Marcos’s employer — a small catering company — dropped its group health plan. The family had been paying $210 a month for coverage. Their COBRA continuation quote came back at $847 a month. Estelle said they stared at that number for several days before they understood they had no alternative.
“It’s more than our rent,” she told me flatly. “We’re paying $820 in rent, and then $847 just so my kids don’t go without insurance. I don’t even know how to explain that math to someone who hasn’t lived it.”
The second problem was the car. Estelle drives a 2019 Hyundai Sonata she financed in 2022. By early 2026, she owed $17,900 on a vehicle that Kelley Blue Book estimated at roughly $11,500. She’s underwater by more than $6,000 on the only asset that lets her generate income. Refinancing at a better rate wasn’t an option — her credit score had slipped to 591 after a series of late payments in mid-2025.
Then came the garnishment letter. A collection agency had obtained a court judgment on $3,200 in unpaid emergency room bills from 2019 — a visit Estelle had made when Dani broke her wrist. Estelle had set up a payment plan at the time, made six payments, then lost track of it during a chaotic stretch following Theo’s birth. The judgment meant a portion of any bank deposits could be seized automatically.
What Gig Workers Often Don’t Know About Their Taxes
Estelle came to the VITA clinic because a neighbor mentioned it was free and that the volunteers could handle self-employment returns. She expected to find out she owed self-employment tax — which she does, at 15.3% on net earnings — and she expected it to be painful. What she did not expect was to learn she had been leaving significant money on the table for at least two tax years.
As the VITA volunteer walked through her numbers, several things became clear. First, Estelle had never claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). She had assumed, incorrectly, that self-employed workers didn’t qualify. According to the IRS, gig and freelance workers absolutely qualify for the EITC as long as they meet income and filing requirements. For tax year 2025, a married couple with two qualifying children earning under approximately $53,000 can receive up to $6,604 in EITC.
The second discovery involved the Child Tax Credit. With two dependent children under 17, Estelle was eligible for up to $2,000 per child — partially refundable through the Additional Child Tax Credit even when tax liability is low. The VITA preparer also flagged that Estelle had been underreporting her deductible mileage expenses, which directly reduced her net self-employment income and, in turn, her tax burden.
The Numbers Come Into Focus
By the time the VITA preparer finished Estelle’s 2025 return, the picture had shifted substantially. After accounting for her self-employment tax deduction, business mileage, and eligible credits, Estelle’s household was looking at a refund of approximately $6,400 — a combination of EITC, the refundable portion of the Child Tax Credit, and a federal withholding correction from a small W-2 job Marcos held briefly in early 2025.
The preparer also mentioned the possibility of filing amended returns for prior years if Estelle had missed the EITC before — a process that can go back three years. Estelle said she plans to look into it, though she isn’t certain she has the documentation.
Estelle’s reaction when the preparer showed her the projected refund total was not celebration. It was something quieter — and more complicated.
The Relief Is Real — But So Are the Limits
A $6,400 refund is meaningful by any measure. For Estelle, it represents roughly seven weeks of gross Uber income. She told me she plans to use the bulk of it to address the garnishment — paying off the $3,200 judgment in full to stop the account seizure risk — and to put two months’ worth of COBRA payments aside before she and Marcos can figure out whether a marketplace plan through HealthCare.gov might offer comparable coverage at a lower cost during the next open enrollment period.
What the refund will not do is fix the car loan. Estelle still owes $17,900 on a vehicle worth roughly $11,500. She’s not in a position to sell it — she needs it to work — and she can’t refinance at a rate that makes sense given her credit score. She knows this. She said so without being asked.
“The $6,400 helps me breathe for a minute,” she said. “It doesn’t change the situation. I’m still underwater. I’m still one bad month away from the same place I was in January. But a minute to breathe matters when you haven’t had one.”
There was one more thing Estelle said before we wrapped up. She’d asked the VITA volunteer why this wasn’t better publicized — why gig workers weren’t routinely told about the EITC when they signed up for platforms like Uber. The volunteer didn’t have a satisfying answer. Neither do I.
What Estelle’s Story Says About Who Falls Through the Cracks
Estelle Guzman is not an outlier. The IRS estimates that roughly one in five eligible workers fails to claim the EITC each year — leaving approximately $7 billion in unclaimed credits annually. Gig workers, who often receive 1099-K forms rather than W-2s and carry the added complexity of self-employment tax, are disproportionately likely to either avoid filing or file incorrectly.
VITA clinics, run by IRS-certified volunteers and available free to households earning roughly $67,000 or less, exist precisely to close that gap. But they depend on people knowing they exist and walking through the door — something that requires a neighbor’s offhand comment, as it did in Estelle’s case, or a lot of luck.
When I left the community center that Tuesday, Estelle was still at the table, her two-year-old now asleep across her lap, reading something on her phone. She’d filed her return electronically at the clinic. The VITA preparer told her to expect her refund within 10 to 21 days if deposited directly. She told me she was going to count them.
I believed her.
Vivienne Marlowe Reyes is a Senior Tax & Stimulus Writer at American Relief. This article is reported narrative journalism and does not constitute financial or tax advice. Readers with questions about their own tax situations should consult a qualified tax professional or contact a free VITA clinic in their area.
Related: Travis Expected His $4,847 Tax Refund to Cover COBRA Premiums. The IRS Held It for 11 Weeks.
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