Oshkosh city leaders are calling on the state to increase funding to a program that reimburses communities for costs associated with hosting state properties, saying more than a decade of stagnating state support has shifted costs to local property tax payers.
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New Nissan cars are driven onto a rail car to be transported from an automobile processing terminal located at the Port of Los Angeles on April 3, 2024. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signaled a reprieve on auto tariffs will come Tuesday ahead of the president’s stop in Michigan to mark his first 100 days in office.
Bessent and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order Tuesday curtailing the import taxes for domestic car manufacturers, but offered few specifics. The president’s 25% levy on cars and auto parts went into effect at the beginning of April.
“I’m not going to go into the details of the auto tariff relief, but I can tell you that it will go substantially toward reshoring American auto manufacturing,” Bessent said. “And again, the goal here is to bring back the high-quality industrial jobs to the U.S.”
The press secretary and Bessent began the day defending Trump’s trade policy as part of a weeklong morning press conference series marking the 100-day milestone in Trump’s second administration.
Investors and businesses have been on edge since Trump declared foreign trade a national emergency on April 2 and imposed what he billed as “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly every nation. Trump issued a 90-day pause on the steep levies — some reaching nearly 50% — after trillions of dollars disappeared from U.S. and world markets in reaction to the dramatic policy.
However, Trump dug in his heels on goods from China, increasing tariffs to 145%. Nearly all other countries face universal 10% baseline levy.
Nearly a month after the tariffs went into effect, Bessent told reporters the administration has not yet inked deals with any of the 17 trading partners, not counting China, currently in negotiations with the U.S. When pressed about a timeline for the deals, Bessent said Trump has created “strategic uncertainty” as a tool to get the best terms.
“I think the aperture of uncertainty will be narrowing, and as we start moving toward announcing deals, then there will be certainty. But certainty is not necessarily a good thing in negotiating,” Bessent said.
Bessent sidestepped questions about trade talks with China, saying he wouldn’t get “into the nitty-gritty of who’s talking to whom.” China has imposed 125% tariffs on U.S. goods and has denied any meaningful negotiations.
“I think that, you know, over time, we will see that the Chinese tariffs are unsustainable for China,” Bessent said, adding that China sends more goods to the U.S. than Americans send to China.
Americans’ approval of Trump’s job performance, particularly on economic policy, is lagging, according to numerous recent surveys.
In response to a report that Amazon will highlight spikes in prices due to tariffs, Leavitt said the e-commerce behemoth was committing a “hostile and political act.” Punchbowl News reported the story Tuesday citing “a person familiar with the plan.”
Amazon denied the report hours later, according to NPR and other outlets.
When asked about potential economic damage from business owners clamping down on hiring and growth, Bessent told reporters “tax cuts are coming.”
The secretary said he and Trump met at the White House Monday with congressional Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota.
Johnson and Thune have signaled different timelines — from Memorial Day to further into summer — for when Congress would finish a large budget reconciliation package, at the heart of which is Trump’s plan to extend his 2017 tax law.
Bessent said Trump wants the tax bill to revive and expand full business expensing, meaning businesses could write off expenses for certain investments, like equipment.
“The other thing that we are looking to add is full expensing for factories,” Bessent said. “So bring your factory back, you can fully expense the equipment and the building.”
It’s a question that is widely misunderstood, but yes, unauthorized immigrants do pay taxes.
While many immigrants are still paid “under the table” for their work, the majority pay income and payroll taxes on their wages, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. While an exact number is difficult to determine, a 2013 estimate from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy suggested at least half of all unauthorized workers in the United States pay income taxes.
An estimated 70,000 unauthorized immigrants live in Wisconsin, about 47,000 of whom are employed, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. About two-thirds of those had lived in the U.S. for 10 years or more. But that information, while the most recent available, is now over five years old. The Department of Homeland Security estimated that there were 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country as of 2022.
In 2018, unauthorized immigrants in Wisconsin paid an estimated $157 million in federal taxes and $101 million in state and local taxes, totaling nearly $258 million, according to the American Immigration Council. That estimate dropped slightly to a total of $240 million in federal, state and local taxes as of 2022.
Unauthorized immigrant workers nationwide paid an estimated $97 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022, according to a July 2024 report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Unauthorized workers who lack a Social Security number can instead apply for an individual taxpayer identification number through the Internal Revenue Service — a system created in 1996 — to file their income taxes. As of December 2022, there were an estimated 5.8 million active ITINs in the United States, according to the Administration of the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number Program.
Taxpayer ID numbers allow unauthorized workers to file tax returns. All that is required to obtain an ITIN is an application that does not require proof of work authorization or proof that you reside in the United States legally.
ITIN holders’ tax information has historically been legally protected and could not be shared with the Department of Homeland Security or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Unauthorized immigrant workers had been able to get one without threat of the information being shared with authorities who may find and deport them.
But on April 7, the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security struck a deal on behalf of the Trump administration to share taxpayer data on unauthorized individuals under final removal orders. The agreement faces legal challenges.
Some unauthorized immigrants provide employers with fake Social Security numbers, someone else’s number or a previously valid number. When they’re hired, most employers do not and are not required to verify the identification numbers with any government entity, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
But when tax return season comes around, the IRS will not accept filings that include a fake, stolen or invalid Social Security number. If unauthorized workers want to file their taxes and create a paper trail, then they will often obtain an ITIN.
The Social Security Administration may alert an employer when an employee’s name and Social Security number on a W-2 form do not match, but it cannot enforce any penalties. The IRS rarely ever investigates employers with a high number of W-2 forms that don’t match. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, this is due to limited resources and employers’ ability to simply claim they asked an employee for the correct number, which is all that is required of them by law.
The financial penalty for each W-2 discrepancy is so small that the federal government often will not investigate it. Legally, a mismatched name and number cannot be considered proof that a worker is in the country illegally.
According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, many unauthorized workers choose to pay taxes in the hopes that it will eventually help them gain citizenship. Should a pathway to citizenship ever be established through a comprehensive immigration bill, a history of paying taxes can be viewed as a way to show “good faith.”
While many unauthorized immigrants pay taxes, they do not qualify for many benefits like Social Security retirement, Medicare coverage and the federal earned income tax credit — despite contributing billions of dollars in federal payroll taxes that help fund these programs.
If they purchase goods and services in a community, unauthorized immigrants pay sales taxes just like others do. When buying a home, they will pay state and local property taxes as well.
Wisconsin Watch readers have submitted questions to our statehouse team, and we’ll answer them in our series, Ask Wisconsin Watch. Have a question about state government? Ask it here.
How do unauthorized immigrant workers pay taxes? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
The December Farm Foundation Forum, Tax Year 2025: Potential Impacts and Opportunities for Farmers and the Agriculture Sector, covered the possible outcomes and impacts for farms and the greater agricultural sector from potential changes to taxation policy in 2025 and beyond. Some key aspects discussed included the impact of expiring tax provisions, and specific issues like estate tax and bonus depreciation.
The conversation was moderated by Todd Van Hoose, president and CEO of Farm Credit Council, and included input from Mark Albright, public affairs specialist in tax outreach partnership and education at the Internal Revenue Service; Kent Bacus, executive director of government affairs at National Cattlemen’s Beef Association; Tia McDonald, research agricultural economist with USDA Economic Research Service; Paul Neiffer, agribusiness and business advisor with Farm CPA Report; and Elizabeth Swanson, national tax senior manager with Pinion.
Below are some of the main points presented by the panel.
The two-hour discussion, including the audience question and answer session, was recorded and is archived on the Farm Foundation website.
Please note: This summary was created with the help of ChatGPT. Please refer to the recorded session for full details.
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