Myth and Truth About Taxes Paid by Immigrants

One of the biggest misconceptions about undocumented immigrants is that they don’t pay any taxes - which is absolutely not true...

The Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, DC, think tank, suggests that about half of undocumented workers in the United States file income tax returns. The most recent IRS data, from 2015, shows that the agency received 4.4 million income tax returns from workers who don’t have Social Security numbers, which includes a large number of undocumented immigrants. That year, they paid $23.6 billion in income taxes.
.

Dashed Hopes...
Filing taxes helps immigrants create a paper trail to show when they entered the country and how long they’ve been contributing tax dollars. Many are hoping it will help them get legal status one day. That has happened in past reform efforts, and one of the first requirements is usually to prove that a person has been paying taxes. With the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda, however, their chance of getting papers seems remote for now. Comprehensive immigration reform failed in Congress, but Immigrants are still paying their taxes every year.
.

Unauthorized immigrants boost funding for the Social Security system.
A portion of the payroll tax withheld from undocumented immigrants — like all workers — goes to the retirement trust fund at the Social Security Administration. In 2013, the agency reviewed how much money undocumented workers contributed to the retirement trust fund. The number was astonishing: $13 billion in one year.

Read all the details in this story: 
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/13/17229018/undocumented-immigrants-pay-taxes


.