Millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally pay taxes. But do they pay more to the government than multibillion dollar corporations such as Netflix and Amazon?
That’s what some immigration advocates argued as the Trump administration works to deliver on the president’s promise to carry out an historic deportation operation.
“Undocumented immigrants paid more taxes last year than Amazon, GM, IBM & Netflix combined,” Occupy Democrats, a liberal media and advocacy organization, posted June 11 on Facebook.
Social media users shared the statement on other platforms, including LinkedIn, Threads and Instagram.
But is it true?
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Available numbers show that immigrants in the U.S. illegally paid more in taxes in recent years than Amazon, General Motors, IBM and Netflix combined. But there are some caveats to that, including that we don’t have estimates for what such immigrants paid in 2024.
Occupy Democrats did not respond to an email inquiry for this fact-check.
How we compared tax payments between companies and immigrants in the U.S. illegally
For this fact-check, we compared federal personal income taxes to federal corporate income taxes. Brian Kovak, an economics and public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon, told us our approach could potentially underestimate the total tax contributions of immigrants in comparison to companies, since immigrants also pay other types of taxes.
David Kallick, director of Immigration Research Initiative, a nonpartisan think tank, said that comparing people and corporations is not an “apples-to-apples comparison,” but “it’s entirely fair” to compare the taxes paid by people illegally in the country to the taxes paid by corporations, since both relate to federal income taxes.
Immigrants pay billions in U.S. taxes annually
Immigrants in the U.S. illegally pay billions each year in taxes.
Here’s how: The IRS allows people who are not eligible for Social Security numbers, such as people who are in the U.S. illegally, to file their taxes with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN. More than 5.8 million people had active ITINs at the end of 2022, the IRS reported.
Immigrants without lawful permission can pay all forms of taxes, including federal income tax, Social Security and state taxes.
Recent estimates vary on exactly how much they pay.
Yale University’s Budget Lab, a nonpartisan research center, estimated in April that immigrants in the U.S. illegally paid $66 billion in payroll and federal income taxes in 2023. Payroll taxes fund programs such as Social Security and Medicare, and income taxes pay for public services.
The American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy organization, found that in 2023 “households led by undocumented immigrants” paid approximately $89.8 billion in federal, state and local taxes.
In 2024, the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy put the figure at more than $96 billion in federal, state and local taxes based on 2022 numbers. Of that, the group found, about $59.4 billion went to the federal government, and $37.3 billion went to state and local taxes.
The right-leaning Federation for American Immigration Reform criticized the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s methodology, saying it undercounted the number of U.S. people in the U.S. illegally and overcounted the number of workers in the U.S. illegally and their income.
But FAIR’s average annual income calculations for people in the United States illegally align roughly with the institute’s findings. For example, FAIR used the average income for “unskilled jobs” in California to estimate that people in the state illegally make $40,000 dollars a year, which lands slightly higher than the institute’s average income estimate of about $38,000 per year.
Because state and local taxes vary, we focused on federal income tax data to compare tax payments by Amazon, Netflix, IBM and GM and immigrants in the U.S. illegally. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimated that immigrants in the U.S. illegally paid $19.5 billion in federal income taxes in 2022, and Yale’s Budget Lab estimate was $22 billion for 2023.
How do corporations’ tax contributions compare?
Looking at 2022 data, we found that Amazon, Netflix, IBM and GM together paid about $5 billion in federal income taxes: $2.2 billion by Amazon, $772 million by Netflix, $391 million by IBM, and $1.88 billion by GM.
A 2022 federal law raised taxes on large companies, presumably increasing these companies’ 2024 federal income tax contributions. The Inflation Reduction Act, signed by President Joe Biden, included the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax, which imposed a 15% tax on corporations with $1 billion or more in annual profits.
The companies’ 2024 public disclosures show that, combined, these companies paid about $15 billion in federal income taxes in 2024: $9 billion by Amazon, $1.25 billion by Netflix, $2.1 billion by IBM, and $2.4 billion by GM.
That’s about $4 billion less than what the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found immigrants paid in federal income taxes in 2022 and about $7 billion less than the Yale analysis said they paid in 2023.
Our ruling
Occupy Democrats said, “Undocumented immigrants paid more taxes last year than Amazon, GM, IBM & Netflix combined.”
Independent think tank analyses found that in 2022 and 2023, people in the country illegally paid $66 billion to $96 billion in federal, state and local taxes. Of that amount, $19.5 billion to $22 billion was federal income taxes.
That’s higher than the combined federal income taxes paid by Amazon, GM, IBM and Netflix. Tax disclosures show they paid a combined $5 billion in 2022 and $15 billion in 2024 in federal income taxes.
The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. We rate it Mostly True.