NOTE: I DO NOT WANT ANY FORM OF DEBATE ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. I JUST WANT FACTS. IF YOU HAVE AN OPINION TAKE IT ELSEWHERE PLEASE.
In my government class, we have to discuss illegal immigrants being allowed to attend college at in-state resident rates. I know how I feel on this subject and already have my discussion post written in my head. But I’m not sure where some of my classmates are getting the information they’re basing their opinions on.
The vast majority are saying that illegal immigrants don’t pay taxes and so they shouldn’t be allowed to get the same benefits that legal, tax paying residents get.
At least 1 person has said that they know many illegal immigrants who have jobs and pay taxes.
I don’t understand how the whole thing works. How would an illegal immigrant pay taxes without their illegal status coming up? Isn’t a SS# a requirement for getting a job? I know that there are people who came here a really long time ago and have worked and raised a family and bought a house. How would a person do all this without the fact that they’re here illegally come up?
Assuming you’re talking about income taxes, some employers don’t use W9 verification, so whether or not their SSN is valid and tied to the prospective employee doesn’t come up. If you’re an undocumented resident, my guess would be you wouldn’t even try applying at a company like, say, Wells Fargo, where it will come up. Once you’re on the payroll, the taxes are just automatically debited from your check.
Well, the first thing some will do is get a social security number that isn’t theirs; others work for employers who will deduct taxes for them, while they themselves will not file a return – they forgo any refund, so some actually pay extra. And then there are all the non-income taxes that we pay – gas tax, sales tax, etc. Anybody who gets into the system so tenuously wants to avoid making waves, so they often don’t work the system as assiduously as citizens or legitimate resident aliens.
Naturally, there are also those who operate entirely off the books, but it’s harder than you think to avoid paying any taxes whatsoever.
So, as long as they work for a company that doesn’t verify their SSN, they can have a job AND pay taxes.
How would they do their taxes in the spring though? Would they just not do taxes and lose any potential refund?
Edit: Thanks Nametag - you read my mind
Thank you both.
45 states have sales tax, so everyone who buys anything is paying taxes that way. Add in taxes on gas, cigarettes, and alcohol. If an II owns property they pay property tax. If they rent, they indirectly pay it via rent.
The effective tax rates of low-income people is much higher than people think, and the rates of the wealthy is much lower than people think.
Personally I don’t support state tuition for illegal immigrants because they are here illegally, and I don’t like the idea of just ignoring the law. But the tax argument is lame.
Speaking for myself, I added that comment in the sense that even someone who opposes tuition for illegal immigrants thinks the tax argument is wrong. JoeBuck20 seemed to be the same.
If illegal immigrants work – even with fake SSANs – they’re paying taxes. In fact, if they’re using fake information, then that’s taxes that the various governments get to keep because no refund will ever be claimed against it (and poor people typically get refunds without having paid net taxes). That’s just income taxes, of course. Add in things like sales taxes, gasoline taxes, user fees, property taxes (either direct or indirect) and more. Here’s a pertinent article.
That satisfies your GQ to your specifications.
However to add a non-debate nitpick, why is the question whether someone is an illegal alien or not? Most state universities provide in-state tuition rates to state residents, without regard to income qualifications or how much they’re paid in taxes. For example, if you’re a Michigan resident, and you can pay for tuition at Michigan State, it doesn’t matter if you come from a family who never paid a dime in taxes and received net refunds due to progressive tax credits. You’re entitled to in-state rates because you’re a resident. There’s no such thing as legal/illegal residency at the state level, and definitely no such thing as state citizenship.
In short, nobody cares too much if your SSN is valid or your own as long as you’re paying money into the system. You only need a valid SSN if you intend to take money back out of the system.
Now, there are doubtless some employers who don’t do the withholding from employee paychecks like they’re supposed to, and their employees may end up not paying taxes as a result. But that would apply to their legal and illegal employees alike, and if Uncle Sam gets word of it, the employer will be in a heap of trouble. So most just pay it and don’t take the risk.
Income taxes can be avoided even if a worker is put on the payroll and subject to withholding.
Income tax withholding is based on the number of exemptions that you claim on your W-4. At lower pay levels it only takes 4-5 exemptions to eliminate all federal income tax withholding.
It’s still a net win for the government, because at these pay levels, a lot of people qualify for all sorts of refundable tax credits that would result in a refund despite not having paid taxes.
It has been mentioned before that an illegal immigrant’s SSN may not be bogus. I got a perfectly-legal SSN when I went to the US to study; it would have been valid if I’d caved in when, after finishing my studies, my employer wanted me to keep working for them but without going through the process of following the necessary steps to keep my legal status. I understand that my case prompted the company’s still-newish HR Manager to take a long, hard look at their employment and immigration practices; she found out that 1/3 of the company’s employees were “not completely documented” at any given time and raised Hell over it.
I would have been illegal, but my SSN would have been (and is now, even though I currently don’t hold any kind of Visa for the US) perfectly legit, as are the thousands of SSNs issued to foreign students every year.
And FTR, I paid US taxes all five years that I lived there and have had to explain sloooowly to several Concerned Entities (IRS twice, the accounting firm which my second-time-around employer hired to do my taxes twice more) that “I am not currently required to file income taxes in the US, since I am neither a US citizen or national nor a resident there, nor have I received any income from the US in the last fiscal year” four times since I left for the last time. It hasn’t even been on consecutive years…
We don’t have a state income tax in Texas; state universities are financed in other ways. Everybody here pays sales tax. (Last Saturday I ate at Pico’s Mex Mex–in a heavily Hispanic part of Houston. There were lots of signs offering help with Inspection Stickers & other sources of State revenue. And help with Income Tax–to keep the Feds happy.)
A bogus SSN doesn’t raise ANY flags. It has always been possible for illegal aliens to file a tax return using an ITIN, even when their W-2 for an SSN that isn’t theirs.
The IRS even modified the e-file specifications so that these people can e-file instead of having to mail the returns in. I think that modification was for the 2008 filing, but don’t quote me on that.
The IRS doesn’t give a rip about immigration status. They’re tasked by Congress to collect tax revenue and administer the tax code - not to enforce immigration.
To what extent do the immigrants know that, though? I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them saw the government as a single monolithic entity, and assumed that anything the IRS knew about them, the immigration officials knew also.
