Full Citation

Title: The Tax Consequences of Amnesty: Evidence from the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2015

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Abstract: The potential consequences of granting amnesty to some or all of the estimated 11.5 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. today are a source of great controversy. We attempt to inform this debate by estimating the impacts of the last major U.S. amnesty – through the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) – on income tax contributions and participation. Our empirical approach exploits both the timing of IRCA and the geographic unevenness of applications for temporary legal status under the law, and our analysis focuses on California, which was home to a majority of applicants. Using a newly constructed county-level panel of highly-detailed income tax statistics, we find that counties with more amnesty applicants per capita saw relatively large increases in per-capita income tax returns filed starting in 1986. Consistent with applicant demographics, the increases in filing rates were concentrated among low-income filers and were accompanied by increased claims of California’s renter’s tax credit and increases in per-capita federal transfers under the EITC.

Url: https://www.sole-jole.org/assets/docs/16473.pdf

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Authors: Cascio, Elizabeth; Lewis, Ethan

Publisher: Dartmouth College and NBER

Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration

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