• Lojcs@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    How is the government getting taxes from people it doesn’t know exist?? I thought you had to file your taxes yourself in America, why or how would the migrants even do that? Or if the employer is doing that, who do they say they are doing it for??

    • Ibaudia@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Undocumented migrants still pay taxes that are built into systems we interact with, like sales, rent, mortgage, etc. They also frequently have payroll taxes taken out, and even file taxes using an ITIN instead of SSN. They also can’t capitalize on govt. programs like section 8 or social security, so they are only able to contribute to these funding pools. Undocumented migrants generate billions per year in taxes for the US.

    • s38b35M5@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Filing taxes is how we get refunds for overpaying in the US.

      Paying taxes is done for us, through withholding out of our paychecks (don’t need a SS#, as a TIN will do here), sales tax on purchases of goods, and in other ways, like connected to housing, etc.

      • Lojcs@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Is sales tax included in prices? I’ve seen people online saying it’s often not since it varies from place to place?

        • edgemaster72@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Correct, sales tax is not included in pricing in the US. I learned that at a fairly young age when I wanted to spend $20 I had from my birthday on a $20 Lego set when whoops, need another dollar (thankfully my mom was there to cover it)

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      How is the government getting taxes from people it doesn’t know exist??

      Going to the store and handing over my money for the stuff. There’s a % sales tax at the bottom of my receipt, but how is this possible?! I didn’t tell the government I was going shopping today.

      Drive back home to my apartment, where I pay my rent for the month. My landlord forward a chunk of that money to the city as real estate taxes. But I never formally registered my citizenship at this address, so how can that be?

      Heading to the bar where I earn my living. Most of my income is in tips, which my boss collects and skims the business tax rate off of before distributing the balance. But there’s no bartender’s license to work here, so how did he know to do that?

      Omw home, I’ve got to remember to re-register my car and buy more gas-taxed petrol and damn it feels like there’s a lot of ways for a government to collect tax money from me.

      • Lojcs@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Could you not write this less condescending? I’m sorry I’m not from the US. When I heard people say that sales tax isn’t included in the price and that you need to file your taxes every year I assumed that was how the tax was collected.

        • Landless2029@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          In the United States there is federal corp tax taken from documented workers and paid to the national government (federal tax) by businesses. State tax is also taken the same way and paid to the state.

          This just income tax, but there are many other forms of taxes. Vehicle tax, gas tax, food tax, clothing tax, restaurant tax, etc. These all go to the state and vary in amount depending on the state.
          This is also why our prices don’t include tax. So apple/amazon can show a single price and your state tax gets tacked on at checkout.

          So this “undocumented Immigrants paid X in taxes” is them paying taxes on good but not income. Businesses can pay these people in cash under the table and not paying taxes or benefits for them.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I’m sorry I’m not from the US.

          Sales, real estate, and other consumption taxes aren’t unique to the US.

          When I heard people say that sales tax isn’t included in the price and that you need to file your taxes every year

          You’re hearing bullshit. There was a historical loophole by which online merchants asserted that sales taxes needed to be collected from the individuals purchasing the goods rather than the businesses selling them. That loophole has long since been closed.

          But virtually nobody paid the tax. Few people even know how or what they might owe. And even if they had, you don’t need to be a citizen to buy something online.

      • T00l_shed@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I mean, at the base of it all, do they not buy things? If they buy stuff, they pay taxes.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Income taxes are withheld from the paycheck. The filing is largely unnecessary in the modern day and most people are getting refunds. The IRS offers tax ID numbers to people who don’t have social security numbers and they generally don’t care if you’re a citizen unless you try to claim something like the earned income tax credit. They literally just want to get paid.