If someone told you that you may be one of the more than five million Americans missing out on as much as $6,269 in your year-end paycheck, you’d almost certainly dismiss it as a fantasy or fraud, right? What if I said that you could get that boost from the IRS just for doing your job? It definitely sounds too good to be true, I know.

Fortunately, millions of working families actually can get a significant check from the federal government, thanks to the Federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). For more than 40 years, the EITC has been, by many accounts…