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| Illegal immigrants pay billions in taxes |
| 2008-04-16 |
| Where the heck did CNN go to find a few illegals who pay taxes? In any case, they sould probably be paying tens if not hundreds of billions. They drive on the roads, they take advantage of the medical system, they send their kids to school, they get unemployment and other financial aid, they compete in the job market unfairly, and they export money to Mexico and wherever else. The tax system collects its due, even from a class of workers with little likelihood of claiming a refund and no hope of drawing a Social Security check. Illegal immigrants are paying taxes to Uncle Sam, experts agree. Just how much they pay is hard to determine because the federal government doesn't fully tally it. But the latest figures available indicate it will amount to billions of dollars in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes this year. One rough estimate puts the amount of Social Security taxes alone at around $9 billion per year. Paycheck withholding collects much of the federal tax from illegal workers, just as it does for legal workers. |
| Posted by:gorb |
| #17 My son used to manage a fast food restaurant in a mall. Most of his workers were Mexican. On their W-4s, they would claim lots of exemptions, so that they had little or nothing withheld (other than FICA). Yeah, its illegal to claim too many exemptions, but since they were already here illegally, what did they care? Then they never bothered to file their income tax, since they weren't getting a refund anyway. |
| Posted by: Rambler in California 2008-04-16 19:39 |
| #16 Thaimble - the 82d Airborne has to pay too much tax, too, just like the rest of us. They'd probably say, gee, love to help ya' but posse comitatus and all that, and offer to help direct traffic (Yeah, I know Congress can vote for an exemption, but do you really think those clowns could get it together in time?) |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-04-16 19:22 |
| #15 If there was no withholding and everyone had to pay all the taxes they owed to the USG at once on April 15, there would be armed insurrection nationwide beginning in mid-February. You'd have to call out the 82nd Airborne to stop the massive torch-and-pitchfork march on Washington in April. |
| Posted by: Thaimble Scourge of the Pixies4707 2008-04-16 17:43 |
| #14 Add to that - everyone has to write a check and actually pay - no more 'automatic withholding'. As long as they have to do something to pay their taxes (and realize just how much is being taken out). If more people actually saw the money leaving their posession the more they will want to know where the hell it's going to. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2008-04-16 16:52 |
| #13 Old Spook: I have a better idea - everybody pays, regardless of poverty level. Every penny of earned income is taxed. The lowest level, the first $20,000 in earned income, is taxed at 1%. Earned income between $20K and 50K is taxed at 2.5%, regardless of your overall income. Earned income between 50K and 250K is taxed at 5%, income between $250k and $1million is taxed at 7.5%. Anyone making over $1million pays 10% on all income over $1mil. Everybody pays the same amount on each level of income. The higher your level of income, the higher your taxes (also the greater benefit you get from Federal services). No deductions, no exemptions, no reductions. Everybody pays, everybody is affected by government behavior. I think we'd see a higher turnout in the polls if everybody had to pay taxes, regardless of how little or how much they made. As for illegals, hanging a few of them along the "fence" would do wonders toward stopping the invasion. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2008-04-16 16:31 |
| #12 The AP and CNN. Doing their part for that there "Comprehensive Immigration Reform"... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-04-16 12:15 |
| #11 Damn your Vulcan engineer logic, Frank G. Isn't using arithmetic against journalists forbidden by the Geneva Conventions or something? |
| Posted by: SteveS 2008-04-16 11:53 |
| #10 Abolish the income tax and all the additional taxes (excise taxes, gasoline taxes, etc). Replace it with a flat 12% (no deductions for anything) for any income above the poverty level. This includes all capital gains, etc. Treat it all as income. Taxes become simple: How much did you make? Subtract the poverty level set by Congress for the year. Send in 12% of whats left. Add in a national sales tax to pay the differential. That way Congress has to raise taxes when they raise spending above 10% of the gross national income above poverty level. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-04-16 10:38 |
| #9 “The Internal Revenue Service doesn't have an estimate of how many illegal immigrants pay income tax.” Well lookey there…the obligatory “No one really knows for sure” statement buried half way into the article. This is the authors’ subtle way of conceding that this entire report is complete bullshit. The low estimate for illegal aliens currently in the US is at 8-12 million however the high estimate puts it at 18-20 million. And all the researchers of those estimates fully admit that their methodology is based, in large part, on assumptive figures. Of course, that doesn’t stop the authors of this trash to make improvable projections based on acknowledged inventions. And it certainly won’t stop some politician during the next immigration debate from entering this article citing statistics with a plus/minus ratio of 12 million people into the congressional record. |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2008-04-16 10:07 |
| #8 They may put in billions in taxes, but they take out multi-billions in services, jail and other expenses. Of course, according to government accounting that is coming out ahead! For the rest of us, that means bankruptcy if we don't change our spending habits. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2008-04-16 08:25 |
| #7 pocketed by a slimy, but wealthy, elite The people who underpay illegals and pocket the difference range from other illegals running small crews, small and medium sized businessmen undercutting their competitors to stockholders in national corporations. The slimy... comment refers to an ex-brother in law, but is common in the southwest, and more recently, nationwide. |
| Posted by: ed 2008-04-16 08:11 |
| #6 But one indicator is the 9 million W-2 forms with mismatched names and Social Security numbers it received in 2004. The IRS said the W-2 forms with invalid Social Security numbers reported about $53 billion in wages and about three-fourths of that, $40 billion in wages, had taxes withheld lessee: $40B divided by 9M = $4444 avg claimed wages with taxes w/h....how much tax would be taken out? At 8% (prolly way high for that low a bracket, more likely 0%) = $356. Ima call CNN Bullshit, and an agenda-driven study. |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-04-16 08:04 |
| #5 $30 billion/year alone for just the education of illegal aliens' children, both foreign and US born. That implies their are over 3 million of their children here, given schoolkids cost a bit under $10,000/year to (mis)educate. 1. The agency estimates that for 2005, the last year for which figures are available, about $9 billion in taxes was paid 2. He calculates that illegal immigrants contributed $428 billion dollars Going by the rule of thumb that wages are 70% of GDP and illegals don't max out SS wages, the same $300 billion earned by legal workers would generate $45.8 billion in SS+Medicare taxes. What happens is the wage differentials and unpaid taxes are pocketed by a slimy, but wealthy, elite and taxpayers are given the task of picking up the tab for the 12+ million illegals. |
| Posted by: ed 2008-04-16 08:04 |
| #4 They pay 9 Billion. How much do they take to support, jail, ect? |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2008-04-16 06:54 |
| #3 Social Security taxes? Yeah, they're paying a portion of the income to which they have no right to the SSA. Tough. Go home, work there. |
| Posted by: Creatch Trotsky 2008-04-16 02:36 |
| #2 I seriously doubt this article. Gardeners, maid, nannys, and fieldworkers don't have salary checks and withholding. They are paid in cash. Their only tax is sales tax. If the Gov would allow us all to pay just sales tax they'd have higher approval ratings. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2008-04-16 02:32 |
| #1 As already noted, it's great they bring in billions but the article conveniently fails to mention how many billions they cost us in food stamps and subsidized housing, schools, lost wages for legals, unemployment, medical etc. etc. Thus we can assume it is nothing more than the typical agenda driven, poorly researched propaganda crap that we have so become accustomed to. What these articles never mention is that it is simply immoral to force these workers to stay in the shadows where they have no legal status so that businesses can have cheap labor. All of the arguments to keep them in this status are the same arguments that they made to keep the institution of slavery: the economy will collapse if we change it, they do jobs no one else wil do, and they are better off being taken advantage of than they would be if we ended this institution of undocumented labor. As I always say and will keep saying - it is simply immoral to continue this institution as it exists today. |
| Posted by: Woodrow Slusorong7967 2008-04-16 02:09 |