The IRS may owe you money from Covid, but you actually have to do something to claim it
This slow, quiet sorting out of COVID-era financial mistakes is long overdue.
Support The Capitalist
Become a paid subscriber today and access the Live Capitalist chat
The financial wreckage left behind by the COVID era is still being cleaned up, and for once, the news isn’t all bad. Tens of millions of American taxpayers may be entitled to refunds or significant reductions in penalties and interest from the pandemic years — but there’s a catch.
You have to actively claim it, and the deadline is fast approaching.
The National Taxpayer Advocate recently issued a stark warning: because of a federal court ruling involving the COVID disaster declaration, filing and payment deadlines were automatically postponed across the entire period from January 20, 2020, through May 11, 2023. Many people who paid penalties or interest during that time may now be eligible for refunds or abatements. The problem is that relief is not automatic. Taxpayers must file a claim to the IRS using Form 843, and in most cases, that still means paper filing. The absolute deadline to submit those claims is July 10, 2026.
This is one of those rare all too moments where the government actually owes ordinary people money, and yet the process has been left deliberately cumbersome. The IRS has not created a simple electronic portal or launched a major public awareness campaign. Instead, the burden falls on individual taxpayers to figure this out and act before the window closes.
Which is why we are writing about it.
Sponsored by: Mode Mobile
Investors are watching this fast growing tech company
🚨 No, it’s not the publicly traded tech giant you might expect… Meet $MODE the disruptor turning phones into income generators.
📲 Mode’s 32,481% revenue growth ranked them #1 on Deloitte’s list of fastest-growing companies in software. They aim to pioneer “Privatized Universal Basic Income“ powered by technology, not government, and their EarnPhone has already helped consumers earn & save $1B+.
Invest today and earn up to 20% bonus shares.
The financial carnage of the COVID period was enormous. Millions of Americans faced delayed filings, missed payments, and accumulating penalties and interest through no fault of their own when the world got turned upside down. The court ruling recognized that the disaster declaration should have protected people from those consequences. Now the IRS is quietly sitting on what could be billions of dollars in potential refunds while the clock ticks down.
This is something people need to actively do. If you filed tax returns, made payments, or had penalties assessed between early 2020 and mid-2023, you should check whether you might be owed money. The National Taxpayer Advocate has urged the IRS to do more to publicize the issue and make the process easier, but so far that hasn’t happened. Waiting for the government to fix this for you is likely a losing strategy!
The good news is that if you qualify, the potential benefit could be meaningful. Even relatively small refunds or penalty reductions can add up, especially for families who were already stretched thin during the pandemic years and afterwards. The bad news is that the July 10, 2026 deadline is not far away in bureaucratic time, and once it passes, the opportunity is gone for good.
This slow, quiet sorting out of COVID-era financial mistakes is long overdue. For years, the focus was on massive government spending and emergency programs. Now we’re seeing the mundane but vitally important cleanup phase, the part where ordinary taxpayers might actually recover some of what they lost to penalties and interest they never should have owed in the first place.
Don’t assume the IRS will reach out to you. They won’t. Don’t assume someone else will handle this. They won’t. If there’s even a chance you’re owed money, it is worth investigating now. The process may be annoying, but the potential payoff is real.
The financial consequences of the pandemic didn’t end when the emergency declaration did. They are still working their way through the system. For once, the system may actually owe some of that money back to the people who paid it.
And just to make sure that you have the link to the IRS explaining what you need to do, here is the link again.
https://www.taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/news/nta-blog/tens-of-millions-of-taxpayers-may-be-eligible-for-significant-tax-refunds/2026/04/
Whether you collect it is up to you.
Let us know your thoughts in the new Capitalist chat portal and if you are going to claim, or have already claimed and what your experience was.