What percentage of illegal immigrants pay federal income taxes in the US?
Executive summary
There is no single, authoritative percentage in the public record for how many undocumented (commonly called “illegal”) immigrants specifically pay federal income tax; estimates and data points in public studies imply a range rather than a precise figure. Available reporting shows significant tax contributions by the undocumented population — including an estimated $19.5 billion in federal income taxes in 2022 — but the share of individuals who file federal income-tax returns or otherwise remit federal income tax is reported inconsistently and remains uncertain [1] [2] [3].
1. Why the question is harder than it looks: data, definitions and different taxes
The core difficulty is definitional and data-driven: “pay federal income tax” can mean (a) file a federal income-tax return, (b) have federal income tax withheld from wages, or (c) end up with a net federal income-tax liability after credits and deductions — and the sources treat those differently; researchers tend to report total dollars paid rather than a clean percentage of people doing the paying [2] [4]. Much of the public research therefore aggregates federal, state and local tax dollars or separates payroll taxes from federal income taxes, leaving the precise headcount share unresolved [5] [1].
2. What the major estimates say about dollars, not people
Several recent analyses converge on a large annual tax contribution by undocumented immigrants: ITEP and allied reporting estimate roughly $96.7 billion in total federal, state and local taxes in 2022, with about $59.4 billion going to the federal government in total tax receipts (which includes payroll taxes), while Americans for Tax Fairness reports $19.5 billion of that total as federal income-tax payments specifically in 2022 and $32.3 billion as federal payroll taxes [5] [1] [2]. These dollar figures are well-documented in the cited studies but do not directly translate into a share of individuals who pay federal income tax [5] [1].
3. What return-filing data imply — two different signals
Two types of filing data pull in different directions. The IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service counted over 2.5 million federal tax returns filed using ITINs in 2019 (people who cannot use Social Security Numbers) which — against population estimates like 10.9 million undocumented people in 2022 used by some studies — would imply roughly a quarter of the population appears in ITIN filing data [4] [1]. By contrast, ITEP and other analyses argue “the best evidence suggests that at least 50 percent of undocumented immigrant households currently file income tax returns,” a broader household-based estimate that would imply a substantially larger share are filing [3]. Both figures are reported in the literature, and neither is a definitive census of individual federal income taxpayers among undocumented residents [4] [3].
4. Payroll withholding complicates the headcount
Many undocumented workers pay federal payroll taxes through automatic withholding even if they do not file federal income-tax returns or lack SSNs; these contributions show up in the dollars tallies but not necessarily in return-filing counts [2] [4]. Thus a person might contribute to federal programs via payroll tax without appearing in ITIN return statistics, which means counting only ITIN filings will understate the share of undocumented people who are financially contributing to federal tax receipts [2] [4].
5. The most honest answer the sources support
Public sources do not provide a single, verifiable percentage of undocumented people who pay federal income tax; the reporting supports a plausible range. Conservative interpretation of ITIN filings points toward roughly 20–30 percent of the undocumented population appearing in ITIN return records [4] [1], while household-level estimates and some academic summaries argue that roughly half or more of undocumented households file returns and/or pay some federal taxes [3] [6]. Therefore the evidence supports saying: between about one-quarter and one-half of undocumented immigrants are likely captured in filing or related data that indicate payment of federal income taxes, but the exact percentage is uncertain because of different measurement approaches and the prevalence of payroll withholding that does not show up as income-tax filing [4] [3] [2].
6. What this uncertainty matters for — and the political frames
The debate over a percentage is politically charged because dollar totals are used to argue about fiscal impact and policy; organizations like ITEP, Americans for Tax Fairness and the American Immigration Council emphasize the billions in tax dollars contributed and the limits on benefits undocumented payers face, while other actors highlight costs — and some summaries cite broader ranges [5] [1] [7]. Readers should note each source’s implicit agenda: advocacy groups foreground contributions [1] [7], academic briefs and IRS data provide particular measurements but stop short of a definitive headcount, and public summaries sometimes conflate “paying taxes” with different tax types [2] [4].