With Stephen Miller’s efforts to get into IRS, Socal Security and other Government data bases?
Why would immigrants (There ARE Millions of them) who might have good jobs and have been paying taxes FOR YEARS?
Contiune to do so?
And THAT could cut US Government revenue by Billions at a time when America’s government needs EVERY dollar it can collect…
Trump does NOT get it….
His ‘guys’ anti-immigrant actions ARE costing the American taxpayer BILLION”s in lost revenue, labor and political support …
Evelin and Gustavo Quebedo have filed U.S. tax returns every year for more than a decade.
That they are undocumented immigrants did not deter them.
“Our thinking has been, if one day there’s immigration reform and the chance to legalize our status, we can show that we file our taxes, are not a burden — that we do the right thing,” said Mr. Quebedo, a car mechanic, who lives with his family in Los Angeles.
But as April 15 approached this year, the couple, who came to the United States from Central America, agonized over whether to file.
Their fears, shared by many of the millions of undocumented people who file tax returns, are rooted in the decision last year by the Internal Revenue Service to give immigration officials the addresses of people subject to deportation — a break with the tax agency’s longstanding practices.
The shift sent shock waves through the I.R.S., where taxpayer privacy has been an article of faith, and through immigrant communities, where filing tax returns was seen as a way for people in the country illegally to show that they were complying with tax laws.
The federal treasury could take a hit. Many undocumented immigrants have taxes withheld in every paycheck, but experts worry some could shift into under-the-table jobs. Others with less formal earnings may now skip filing a tax return — and therefore not pay federal taxes at all. The Yale Budget Lab, a nonpartisan research center, projected lost tax revenue of about $300 billion over a decade.
The fallout from the I.R.S. agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement is becoming clearer as the annual tax deadline nears, according to several organizations that assist immigrants with filing their tax returns….
…
“I don’t know if we can trust this government not to come after us,” Ms. Quebedo said, glancing at their daughter, born in the United States, and their son, brought to the country as a little boy.
For decades, the I.R.S. implicitly encouraged undocumented taxpayers to file a return as part of its broader mission to promote tax compliance. Before the agreement between the I.R.S. and ICE, unauthorized immigrants paid roughly $60 billion annually in federal taxes, according to an estimate by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive think tank. Much of it went to Social Security and Medicare, which are programs that undocumented immigrants cannot benefit from.
With few exceptions, taxpayer information was kept walled off from other government agencies, and that won a measure of trust among many undocumented immigrants. But under President Trump, the effort to find as many immigrants to deport as possible led the administration to try to exploit that trust….
…
Over the summer, ICE sought the addresses of about 1.3 million immigrants, and the I.R.S. handed over information on about 47,000 of them before federal judges ordered a stop to the practice.
“It’s sending the message to undocumented immigrants and mixed-status families that being in the shadows is safer,” said Louis DeSipio, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine….
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.