Not to get all technical here, but doing your taxes is a headache. This year, more than half of tax filers turned to a professional for help, according to the latest IRS stats.

Why it matters: Even low-wage earners shell out for tax prep, cutting into the refund money they rely on to make ends meet, a new survey finds. Even more galling — most of these folks qualify for free filing services.

Driving the news: Monday is the deadline to file your federal return, but if you simply cannot, you can also file an extension.

• There is a pot of gold waiting at the end of the anxiety rainbow. This year's average refund is $3,226.

By the numbers: Still, only one in five workers who qualify for free filing help use the service, according to a new survey of nearly 7,000 service sector workers conducted by the Shift Project. The ongoing survey is conducted by sociologists at Harvard and the University of California, San Francisco.

• The median worker pays $100, equivalent to about six hours of work, to file their taxes each year. Some workers pay as much as $600 to file — a week's wages for someone earning $15 an hour.
• Many of these workers qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit, a refund offered by the federal government responsible for keeping millions out of poverty.

That means folks are using money meant to raise their standard of living and paying it back to tax prep companies.

• "Refunds are really important to this group of workers and filing for taxes, an important part of the...

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