Unauthorized Employment, Back-Taxes and Greencard

austriacus said:
Maybe it's because the USCIS wants the three years of W-2's from your sponsor, not you? Or am I missing something, is there actually a requirement for those who were employed illegally to present their tax documents? I was not required to present my tax documents for the AOS.
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yes , although they requested my W-2s for the interview, I was given an RFE for my employer's. I got pretty much the same advice from green card aspirants or permanent residents from message boards which caused unneccessary stress and panic. USCIS is quite aware that many who are illegally employed are unaware that they can pay taxes without a SS# which is why the sole responsibility is on the employer.
 
envision said:
yes , although they requested my W-2s for the interview, I was given an RFE for my employer's. I got pretty much the same advice from green card aspirants or permanent residents from message boards which caused unneccessary stress and panic. USCIS is quite aware that many who are illegally employed are unaware that they can pay taxes without a SS# which is why the sole responsibility is on the employer.
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The responsibility is always with the individual who owes taxes. Your employer doesn't know how much to withhold. You might have six kids and can claim enough exemptions to make your taxable income zero. Or, you might be making a lot of passive income on the side, in which case you need to withhold an additional amount. The responsibility to make sure your withholding is correct is with you. I can tell my employer right now to change my withholding to zero (by claiming a lot of allowances), although in the end I only harm myself by having to pay a penalty if I withhold less than 90% of the tax I owe.

And if I may say, while it's unfortunate if many illegally employed are unaware they can pay taxes without SSN, I hope they also understand that they must pay taxes.

I think it's in the best interest of illegally employed to pay taxes, especially if they do not have a legal immigration status. In my opinion, Americans have been very tolerant of illegal immigration. But, if American citizens or their elected representatives were to find that these individuals tend to not pay taxes, and it raises the tax burden on all legally employed, I'm not sure if this tolerance would last very long.

Let me do a simple calculation here. Let's assume those illegally employed who do not pay taxes are 5% of the workforce and they represent the average taxpayer in terms of tax obligations. Then, I would expect my income tax to be 5% inflated above what it should be if all gainfully employed individuals were to pay tax. This is $1000 tax in my case. Why should I have to pay $1000 more so you don't have to pay your (back) taxes?

In all fairness, I don't want to accuse all who are illegally employed or illegally present of evading taxes; I just wanted to explain what the consequences would be. I'm sure those who evade taxes are a minority. There are probably many more who have too much tax withheld from their paycheck and, because they don't have a SSN, don't file a return and don't get the refund they deserve. I'm grateful for every illegally employed individual who pays taxes, even if it may be an easier choice for them to do otherwise.
 
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Ok...

I've been kind of caught up in preparing the wedding. We are taking pre-marital classes from the church, which is fun. :D And I'm buying my dress next weekend. :)

bourne24, because you apparently live near or in New York, could you pm me the lawyer that told you that stuff. I mean, we're going to another lawyer (immigration & tax) next week, but two opinions can't hurt.

austricus translates to "österreichischer Bürohansel" :D

I agree with you to some extent, but don't forget that America built this country on the backs of slaves and illegal immigrants. This country wouldn't even function properly anymore if America would to crackdown on illegal immigrants. This has nothing to do with the tolerance of the American public. It's the greed of US companies and lobbyists that set the pace here. Welcome to America, my friend. And as long as it stands in the interest of the companies to have illegal workers, there will be illegal workers. Where there is demand, there is supply. And there obviously is.

There one flaw with your calculation: Every time you even have a new legal immigrant, doesn't the costs of benefits rise disproportionately to the tax income? So therefore you would have paid $1000 for that illegal immigrant, that couldn't get Medicare or WIC, but let's say now it's $3000, because even though he pays taxes, he's now able to access Medicare, FinAid and governmental assistance programs legally? Go figure.
 
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Knowing my USC wife, she would have never dated me, let alone marry me, had I been someone illegally present in this country or someone who didn't pay his taxes. From my point of view, I am a known hardliner on this forum. In the interest of you not getting unpleasant feedback, don't ask people to come out of the woodworks :)
Consult a good CPA and a good attorney. Good luck to you both.
As a footnote, tax evasion does take place in Hollywood too :)


prunenoire said:
I can't believe that there is NO ONE on this entire board that didn't get married to someone that was out-of-status and didn't pay taxes... Would you people please come out of the woodworks? Not everything is always 'hollywood'.
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Concerned4us, I totally forgot that you had insight to my bank accounts and time stubs. Thanks for reminding me.

Triple Citizen, thanks for the advice. We have the appointment already. Your wife is commendable for her stance; however, his status never raised any eyebrows amongst my family, friends or myself and yes, we are all law-abiding, tax paying, middle class citizens. But a struggler identifies with a struggler. Whether a USC, legal or illegal. I guess that's something that only occurs in certain ethnic and religious communities. But what do I know?

The Hollywood reference was more referring to the fairly easy situation of legal immigrants.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I can't knock a fellow USC for supporting the prosecution of illegal immigrants that don't pay their taxes, even though I against the logic of this capitalistic country, but then on the other hand, if you're a GC holder and whining, I suggest you get your citizenship quickly and vote accordingly. Senator prunenoire can't help you with that one! :D
 
prunenoire said:
I agree with you to some extent, but don't forget that America built this country on the backs of slaves and illegal immigrants. This country wouldn't even function properly anymore if America would to crackdown on illegal immigrants. This has nothing to do with the tolerance of the American public. It's the greed of US companies and lobbyists that set the pace here. Welcome to America, my friend. And as long as it stands in the interest of the companies to have illegal workers, there will be illegal workers. Where there is demand, there is supply. And there obviously is.

There one flaw with your calculation: Every time you even have a new legal immigrant, doesn't the costs of benefits rise disproportionately to the tax income? So therefore you would have paid $1000 for that illegal immigrant, that couldn't get Medicare or WIC, but let's say now it's $3000, because even though he pays taxes, he's now able to access Medicare, FinAid and governmental assistance programs legally? Go figure.
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Thanks for your response; in my opinion, your arguments are unrelated to federal income tax evasion but I'll respond to them anyway.

While I agree with you that illegal immigration is driven largely by US business needs, keep in mind this is still a democracy and elected leaders will no doubt listen to the concerns of their constituency. If lobbyists wrote the Immigration and Naturalization Act, I don't think it would be as tough on illegal immigration as it is. I'm curious why you think illegal immigration is a necessity for the economic success of this country. If it were truly necessary, I'm sure we'd have the proper laws in place to allow for legal work for the individuals in question. Else, either the citizens of this nation or the lobbyists for special interests are working against the economic interests of this country. If the only purpose of illegal immigration is that it strictly be illegal - perhaps to depress wages below minimum wage or to save on corporate payroll taxes - it will certainly not benefit the large majority of taxpaying individuals and will not make the US prosperous but instead private companies (which may or may not even re-invest into the US economy or be owned by US investors).

About your other comment regarding the tax consequences of legal immigration, first of all let's be clear that not all legal aliens in this country who work and pay income taxes are entitled to the federal benefits you listed, such as government assistance and financial aid. I happened to pay income taxes for nine years in nonimmigrant status while not being eligible for most federal assistance, so you don't have to be illegal to be a taxpayer with limited use of the collected tax receipts (certainly, even as an LPR, lacking the power of vote, you have basically no influence of what your taxes are being used for). That said, I still don't agree with you that future benefits obligations have anything to do with legal vs. illegal immigration. Even everytime an American citizen is born, we create disproportionate obligations against a future generation because in the current system, every generation pays in less than it is entitled to in the future. What this really requires is for the system to be fixed and it's got nothing to do with immigration. I guess it's a technicality but I also want to point out that Medicare, which you mentioned, is financed from payroll taxes (which is the obligation of the employer to withhold), and not federal individual income taxes which we've been discussing here.
 
prunenoire said:
Oh, and has anyone ever dealt with the free CUNY Immigration Centers lead by Allan Wernick? Any thoughts on that?
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Yes, I've dealt with them once. And I would like to say please by all means spare yourself from that ridiculousness. They are worse than USCIS customer service.

When I went there to get some opinion as to what should I do since it's been year after the green card interview my name check was still pending. The best advice the advisor could come up with was to cancel my application and reapply once my husband became citizen (at that time in 2006 he was a gc holder-and at that time his name check for citizenship was pending for more than good 4 years). I was SO FREAKEN SHOCKED...we just bolted from there.
 
austricus, so what about state taxes? Do we file them in conjunction with the federal taxes?

So what's all this about having back-taxes and not receiving a GC? Is this true or not?

Feb2005, thanks for sharing the experience.
 
prunenoire, it might depend on the state. (Some states don't even have a state/local income tax - I live in one of them.) I think you'd probably file a separate state tax return. I'm not sure how aggressive individual states are in collecting back taxes, but the IRS can be pretty persistent in collecting federal back taxes.

I have personally not heard of a law relating back taxes to admissibility for permanent residency. The one I'm aware of is that sponsors have to file back taxes before they can sponsor someone. I'm not sure if some of your fiance's tax burden could legally become yours upon marriage and affecting your situation as a sponsor (I don't think so, but thought I'd mention the possibility).

Certainly, my opinion would be that it would be "doing to the right" to start paying one's back taxes upon being granted the privilege of becoming a permanent resident and if the IRS ever finds out about the back taxes, the sooner you file for them the less you end up paying in penalties and interest.
 
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