Good morning. It’s tax day. I wish you many happy returns.
Paying their wayToday, many undocumented immigrants are debating whether to file their taxes. That may — or may not — come as a surprise to you. To some, undocumented immigrants are scofflaws, people who come here and leech off the system. “Many, many illegal aliens do not pay taxes,” Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, told Politico last year. Except most do pay taxes, according to researchers. The Internal Revenue Service lets anyone file, whether they have a Social Security number or not. Undocumented workers in the United States pay roughly $20 billion in income taxes each year. As today’s tax day loomed, many of those immigrants worried. Under the Trump administration, the I.R.S. shared some of their addresses with immigration officials — something it had never done before. They fear that federal agents might scoop them up, should they send in their tax forms. “I don’t know if we can trust this government not to come after us,” one woman told The Times. She and her husband, also undocumented, have paid federal taxes every year for more than a decade. He described their thinking to my colleague Miriam Jordan, who covers immigration: “If one day there’s immigration reform and the chance to legalize our status, we can show that we file our taxes, are not a burden — that we do the right thing,” he said. The Treasury will collect a lot less money if undocumented workers skip filing season this year. Many have taxes withheld in their paychecks, but more of them could take under-the-table jobs and pay no federal taxes at all. The Yale Budget Lab, a nonpartisan research center, estimated a loss of $300 billion in tax revenue over a decade. Read more about feeling caught between the desire to do right and the fear of deportation. Nice returnsPlenty of taxpayers who are in the country legally, though, are starting to benefit from the tax cut that Republicans passed last year, reports Andrew Duehren, who covers tax policy. He spoke with more than three dozen taxpayers about that, up and down the income ladder. Many told him they had received their largest refund in years, allowing them to pay down debt, save more or cover the cost of a vacation or a new bed. That was true of higher earners especially. “I thought it could be five figures, but it was still a little more, and a welcome surprise,” one told Andrew. Those at the other end of the scale sometimes saw little to no benefit. “Now we’re going to have to figure out where to tighten up in other areas so we can get that money a different way,” a scheduling manager at a home improvement company told Andrew. She had thought her refund would allow her to put money toward a car to replace her 2006 Acura. It did not. But even breaking even can feel like a win. Nicole Mendoza, 68, a waitress at a Cracker Barrel in Canton, Ga., told Andrew she earned about $38,000 last year and paid $551 in federal income taxes. “I got back every penny,” Mendoza said. A slogFiling taxes is one of those rare activities that everyone hates. (I loathe it so much that I don’t even know if my family has filed this year. That’s my wife’s game. I have different responsibilities.) My colleague Evan Gorelick breaks down just how painful it is, in relative terms:
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