This week taxes are declared in the United States and, like last year, It is likely that many undocumented immigrants choose not to file them for fear of being located and deported by Donald Trump’s government, all to the detriment of government coffers.
There is a judicial blockage of the agreement between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and ICE to share data on taxpayers who use the Non-public Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) which the IRS provides to some categories of noncitizens who cannot obtain a Social Security number. But the fear of immigrants, undocumented and authorized, persists, especially in the midst of the anti-immigrant atmosphere that the country is experiencing.
It will be known if there were any this year anyway. effect on tax filing from people without documents.
Last year, when the deal was announced, The Washington Submit reported that there was a nationwide decline in tax filingsboth by undocumented immigrants and authorized residents who live in households with mixed immigration status.
“Our customers want to pay taxes and they want to do the right thing. But do theywhat happens if the immigration authorities come “Why have they filed their tax return and ended up being deported?” Diana Avellaneda, from the DAPA tax firm in Maryland, told the newspaper.
As of April 15, 2025, DAPA had processed 488 tax returns or extensionscompared to 968 in the same period in 2024, according to Avellaneda.
The agreement between IRS and ICE will remain blocked until an appeals court, hearing the case, issues a ruling.
But the facts do not change. Immigrants, undocumented and authorized, pay substantial amounts in taxes and maintain the solvency of vital social programs.
It’s good to review the figures
According to the American Immigration Council (AIC)“in 2023, households headed by undocumented immigrants paid $89.8 billion in federal, state and local taxes.” In 2022, the combined taxes of those undocumented immigrants totaled nearly $100 billion, according to the Institute on Taxation and Financial Protection (ITEP).
Also in 2022, “Undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in taxes to Social Security, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes,” ITEP reported. These are benefits to which they are not entitled due to their immigration status.
And those figures are included in the $651.9 billion that all immigrants, documented and undocumented, paid in taxes in 2023, $419.8 billion in federal taxes, and $232.1 billion in local and state taxesaccording to the AIC.
But for Trump, who prides himself on being a master negotiator, his prejudice against immigrants of color outweighs the economic benefits that represent through their work in vital industries, paying taxes, their purchasing power as consumers, and their entrepreneurship.
Fill the daily detainee quotas and deportees comes before adding necessary dollars to government coffers that translate into services, infrastructure and social programs that benefit us all.
According to ITEP, “each 10 percentage point decrease in the income tax compliance rate of undocumented immigrants would reduce federal tax revenues by $8.6 billion annually, and state tax collection and native at $900 million dollars annually.”
A decrease of 30 percentage points in the tax compliance rate would mean a reduction of $25.9 billion annually for the federal governmentand $2.6 billion for state and local governments.
The massive deportations of undocumented immigrants represent the loss of crucial labor, of entrepreneurs who open businesses, of consumers, of people who pay taxes and keep important social programs afloat. That is without counting the humanitarian part with the separation of families, including the 4 million families with mixed migratory status and the 5.1 million citizen children who live in them.
But the legalization of those 11 million undocumented immigrants and granting them work permits would generate between $40,000 and $137,000 million dollars in additional annual income to the treasury. “This is because a less inclined workforce exploitation would receive higher wages (and therefore pay more taxes) and increase tax compliance by both employers and employees,” according to American citizens for Tax Fairness.
These are the consequences of underestimating the tax contribution of the undocumented.
Keep reading:
- The 86-year-old French woman arrested by ICE after moving to the US to recover a lost love
- Trump fires two immigration judges after rulings in pro-Palestinian student cases
- “He was about to graduate”: the story of Mauro Henríquez, the deported student in Texas
