Why Didn’t You File Your Taxes?
How College Students Are Missing Out on Thousands — and What It’s Costing Us All
Didn’t you know the government might owe you?
I didn’t. Not until it was almost too late.
They say ignorance is bliss — and for a long time, I believed that. Especially when it came to taxes. That was grown-up stuff. The kind of thing people in suits worried about, not college students eating cereal for dinner and praying their debit card doesn’t decline. Taxes weren’t even on my radar. Not when I was a teenager. Not when I got my first job. Money came in, money went out, and some mysterious chunk disappeared from my paycheck. I never asked where it went.
But that’s how ignorance works, right? It doesn’t feel dangerous until you realize what you’ve been missing.
For me, the wake-up call came in the most unexpected way: sitting in a circle of friends, swapping stories about tax refunds like they were Pokémon cards. One friend said they got over $2,000 back. Another was planning a spring break trip with theirs. Someone else used it to wipe out their credit card debt. And I just sat there blinking, trying to understand what they were even talking about.
“You didn’t file?” one of them asked.
“No,” I said. “Should I have?”
Get Delilah Trias’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
That’s when it hit me — I could’ve had money back. Real money. Rent money. Grocery money. Tuition money. And I hadn’t even thought to ask.
The average tax refund from the IRS is over $3,000. For college students, that’s not pocket change. That could be three months of rent or almost a semester’s worth of textbooks. But here’s the thing: so many of us don’t file. Not because we’re lazy or irresponsible — but because no one ever told us how or why to do it. We’re not taught how to read a W-2 or what a standard deduction even means. Nobody pulls us aside in high school and says, “Hey, just so you know, this is how you get your money back.” So we just… don’t. And that silence costs us.
According to recent IRS data, taxpayers failed to file for more than $1 billion in refunds in a single tax season. A huge chunk of that likely includes students — people like us who assumed we didn’t make enough to matter. But in 2025, if you’re a dependent and made over $14,600 from a job — or even just over $400 from freelance or self-employed work — you’re required to file. And if you had any taxes withheld from your paychecks, even if you earned less than that, you could still get money back. The government doesn’t automatically give it to you. You have to ask for it. You have to file.
Here’s something else they don’t tell you: you only have three years to claim a refund before the government gets to keep it. That’s right — if you skip filing for too long, you’re literally donating your paycheck back to the IRS.
And the IRS? Oh, they’re doing just fine. They estimate that the “tax gap” — the amount owed but not paid — was $688 billion in 2021. That includes under-the-table jobs, side gigs, and yes, people who just didn’t file. It’s easy to assume our little student jobs don’t matter, but when millions of us think that way, it adds up. It adds up for the government — and it adds up againstus when we miss out on money that could be ours.
It’s not just about the money, though. It’s about the mindset. For me, taxes became a symbol of everything I was too afraid to ask about. I assumed that since I wasn’t making “real” money, I didn’t need to pay attention. I assumed my parents’ tax guy would somehow just handle it. I assumed filing taxes was something you figured out after graduation, like how to write a cover letter or what a deductible is.
But the truth is, the longer you sit in confusion, the easier it is to stay stuck there. And the more money — and confidence — you leave behind.
Now I file. I ask questions. I track what I earn, even if it’s just a part-time job or a freelance gig on the side. I still don’t have it all figured out, but I don’t let that stop me from trying. Because knowing — even just a little — is way more powerful than staying in the dark.
So, let me ask you again:
Why didn’t you file your taxes?
Didn’t you know the government might owe you?
