Topic "Illegals" and paying taxes - read this and know more than the guy at the water cooler

[underpants]

FACTS on "illegals"
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/underpants/27

According to the US Social Security Administration 75% pay payroll taxes and will contribute $6-7 BILLION in Social Security funds that they will never claim.

Do they drain social service resources MORE than they contribute?

The CATO Institute (yes them) says: -- this is from 1997 for full disclosure

Myth number four: Immigrants impose a financial burden on taxpayers. Immigrants do make somewhat heavier use of means-tested welfare programs than natives. There have been especially flagrant abuses by immigrants of particular welfare programs, such as Supplemental Security Income. But because immigrants tend to come to the United States during the start of their working years --between the ages of 18 and 35 -- they make very large net contributions to the two largest income transfer programs: Social Security and Medicare. When the payroll tax contributions of immigrants are taken into account, the Urban Institute found that the foreign born constitute a net fiscal windfall to the public sector of some $20 billion a year. To the extent that welfare use by immigrants is a problem, this can be addressed by restricting the welfare eligibility of immigrants, not by keeping immigrants out.
http://www.cato.org/dailys/4-22-97.html

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/underpants/27

April 11, 2006
Immigrants and Taxes
http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/1424.html

The IRS has seen an increase in the number of tax returns filed using an Individual Tax Identification Number.
Last year, 1.4 million people filed tax returns using the numbers. That's an increase of 40 percent over the previous year.
In 2003, 7,600 people in New Mexico requested the numbers.

While some argue that illegal immigrants do not pay their fair share of taxes compared to the value of government services they receive, this is partially a normative question that needs to be accompanied by more empirical evidence to support or refute. But to answer the question, "Do illegal immigrants pay any taxes?" the answer is clearly yes.

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

The impact on Social Security is significant, though, because most of that money is never claimed by the people who pay it but instead helps cover retirement checks to legal workers.

Federal law prohibits paying Social Security to illegal immigrants, but the administration factors in both legal and illegal immigration when projecting the trust fund's long-term solvency.

That adds up to roughly $90 billion in federal taxes during they eight-year period. He calculates that illegal immigrants contributed $428 billion dollars to the nation's $13.6 trillion gross domestic product.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081029184102AAWkAAt


Illegal Immigrants are Paying a Lot More Taxes Than You Think
May 1, 2006
Eight million illegals pay Social Security, Medicare, and income taxes
http://reason.org/news/show/122411.html

In reality, the 1996 welfare reform bill disqualified illegal immigrants from nearly all means-tested government programs including food stamps, housing assistance, Medicaid and Medicare-funded hospitalization. The only services that illegals can still get are emergency medical care and K-12 education.

The cost of undocumented aliens is an issue that immigrant bashers have created to whip up indignation against people they don't want here in the first place. With the Senate having just returned from yet another vacation and promising to revisit the stalled immigration bill, politicians ought to set the record straight: Illegals are not milking the government. If anything, it is the other way around.

Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst at Reason Foundation, a free-market think tank. This column was originally distributed by the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.

Study: Immigrants Pay Tax Share
No Gap With U.S.-Born Residents Seen in Area, but Those Here Illegally Account for Less
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/04/AR2006060400965.html