Undocumented labor is a little like slave labor for the nation - payroll taxes are removed as the 'employee' is posing as legitimate, but as an undocumented person they aren't officially accruing the years of Social Security history that a documented worker would be adding to… https://t.co/4DipbmqvOY
— Jennifer Depew, RD (@deNutrients) December 18, 2024
New York State Society of CPAs, NYSSCPA, has part of the story.
Undocumented immigrants paid taxes amounting to $96.7 billion in 2022, including funding for government programs that they cannot access, according to a report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a left-leaning think tank. Roughly one-third of their tax payments included $ 25.7 billion to fund Social Security and $6.4 billion to fund Medicare.
Although one of the most common arguments for limiting immigration is the cost borne by the U.S. government, the study showed that undocumented immigrants pay about 26 percent of their income in taxes, Bloomberg News reported.
In total, undocumented immigrants paid $8,889 per person, in federal, state and local taxes in 2022. That translates to public services receiving $8.9 billion in additional tax revenue for every one million undocumented immigrants who reside in the country.
Six states raised more than $1 billion each in tax revenue from undocumented immigrants living within their borders, the report found. Those states are California ($8.5 billion), Texas ($4.9 billion), New York ($3.1 billion), Florida ($1.8 billion), Illinois ($1.5 billion), and New Jersey ($1.3 billion).
In 40 states, undocumented immigrants pay higher state and local tax rates than the top 1 percent of households living within their borders, the report found.
The ITEP estimated the tax payments of undocumented immigrants in several categories, including sales and excise taxes; property taxes paid directly or on taxes folded into rent payments; and payroll taxes, which are paid either through paycheck withholding or filing income tax returns.
Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, ITEP, corroborates this story, or fact. This is kind of important to know since many U.S. taxpayers are besieged with demoralizing stories about how undocumented are getting freebie after freebie, right after right handed to them. Many U.S. workers had become so demoralized that they couldn't see themselves working alongside undocumented workers who are unfairly receiving a score of benefits at the U.S. taxpayers' expense. Turns out that the undocumented are paying into Social Security and into Medicare.
- 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.