Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants REPORT

[Passages]

When are Republicans ever honest?

Key Findings

Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. Most of that amount, $59.4 billion, was paid to the federal government while the remaining $37.3 billion was paid to state and local governments.

Undocumented immigrants paid federal, state, and local taxes of $8,889 per person in 2022. In other words, for every 1 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the country, public services receive $8.9 billion in additional tax revenue.

More than a third of the tax dollars paid by undocumented immigrants go toward payroll taxes dedicated to funding programs that these workers are barred from accessing. Undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes in 2022.

At the state and local levels, slightly less than half (46 percent, or $15.1 billion) of the tax payments made by undocumented immigrants are through sales and excise taxes levied on their purchases. Most other payments are made through property taxes, such as those levied on homeowners and renters (31 percent, or $10.4 billion), or through personal and business income taxes (21 percent, or $7.0 billion).
https://itep.org/undocumented-immigrants-taxes-2024/

[OLDMDDEM]

1. Thank you for this.

[Voltaire2]

2. I've given up. People have simply ingested the

xenophobic propaganda and there is no arguing with them. Immigrants are good for our economy. Among other things: they are generally young and increase the base of support for social security and Medicare.

Also it is ethically dubious that these people pay taxes and are denied services.

[dickthegrouch]

3. I'm curious how those income taxes get paid

Is it all through use of a valid SSN, or does the system accept payments from invalid SSNs and basically just ignore the source?
Companies aren't allowed to hire or keep undocumented workers, and get fined if they do.
The detailed report answered some questions. The methodology is fascinating!
I'd never heard of an ITIN.

[MacDo]

4. Help me understand.

How does someone who is undocumented pay federal/social security tax? They have no number
Sales tax I get, everyone pays that

[Passages]

5. It will require reading through their process.

Some of those are highlighted at the end of the report.

[2] See methodology section for more information on the calculation of estimated tax payments by undocumented immigrants.

[3] See methodology section for more information about current personal income tax compliance.

ITEP (2024). “Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States. Seventh Edition.” Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

[Demobrat]

6. Many years ago , back in the late seventies,

I hired a lady from Mexico to clerk in the office where I worked. I picked her because we had a lot of Spanish speakers in the company and she was fluent in both languages. She gave me a SS card and a green card, which I copied and put in a file.
I was a kid. I didn’t think anything of it.

Six months later she told me her papers were fake. She talked about how she was paying into SS out of every check and would never get credit for it. I was able to help her get her real green card. Don’t know how that would work these days.

[Passages]

7. That is a very interesting story. So many good people trying to make it work

for employer/employee.

[Demobrat]

8. So many people paying in who

will never take anything out. They are the ones propping up the system.

[Passages]

9. Yes, and now we have the receipts.