In Most States, Undocumented Immigrants Pay Higher Tax Rates Than Top 1%

I was going to say, they pay the lowest percentage of real income, and that's just for the ones who do it legally. Illegal or ethically questionably speaking, they pay far less even.

There are ways to get IDs which arent as stringent. Theres also the ITIN:

many use the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN, which allows immigrants without Social Security numbers to legally file tax returns and claim the income reported on their W-2’s to the IRS.

This way they dont need to give a SSN. Legally everyone is required to pay and it might be held against them when trying to gain citizenship. Showing they paid their taxes can work in their favor in showing good moral character. Theres nothing legally that would explicitly help them it might be good for their case.

Though there are many undocumented immigrants who are paid “under the table” for their work and do not pay taxes on their income, many others do pay in the hope that it will someday help them become citizens. Much of the evidence for this motivation is anecdotal, but various attempts at comprehensive immigration reform legislation over the last decade, including the “Gang of Eight” bill S.744, have included provisions like “good moral character” and “paying back taxes” as requirements for obtaining legalization. A provable history of paying taxes is seen as one way to show good faith, should such a bill ever pass.

Source

This article claims they pay a higher effective tax rate, not more in taxes. A citizen working the same position would pay even more in taxes since they would also have to pay income tax.

Maybe the headline should be that sales + other flat taxes are becoming an increasing burden for low income workers. This is the problem for the illegal immigrants in the study, and even more of a problem for citizens who earn the same amount.

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You are completely correct; what it's doing is not presenting *new* ideas so much as pushing back against the narrative of the freeloading immigrant, which is only supported by cherry-picking what taxes "count" as taxes and ignoring the regressive taxes that you, appropriately, note that most people don't think of when they say "taxes".

sales taxes would be fine if they were national and not restricted on things bought sold. Like stocks and bonds and such.

I would be quite surprised if that were true. The illegal immigrants pay a higher tax rate because as some of the poorest people in the country, they are the most affected by regressive taxation (primarily sales taxes, according to this study). As income increases, the distortion from these regressive taxes should decline so the effect of the higher tax brackets that the wealthy are in will become dominant.

Edit: I don't have time to find data for every state, but here's federal data from Pew. Federal taxation is progressive and the share of income paid by the highest earners is many times larger than the share paid by the lowest earners.