Taxes Paid by Immigrants in the Washington, DC Area
Civic Contributions
The metropolitan area is relatively affluent and boasts a strong economy that attracts large numbers of immigrants for jobs at both the high- and low-skilled ends of the labor market.
Immigrants in the Washington area come from more diverse countries of origin than is the case nationally, and a relatively high share come from origins with above average incomes.
This represents 19 percent of the region's total household income and 18 percent of all taxes paid.
Our estimate of the amount of taxes paid by immigrants is an underestimate, because it is based on 19992000 data, and the number of immigrants in the region has grown from 850,000 to at least 1.2 million since that time.
Although immigrant households on average have lower incomes than native-born Washington, D.C., area households, they pay nearly the same share of their incomes in taxes.
The findings in this report are based mostly on analysis of 2000 U.S. Census data, because the census provides the most recent comprehensive data that allow disaggregation by country of origin groups and by many of the region's local jurisdictions.
We calculate taxes at both the individual level (e.g., income and payroll taxes) and the household level (e.g., property taxes), but aggregate them up to the household level.
Throughout the report we refer to households headed by immigrants (whether citizens, legal immigrants, or unauthorized migrants) as "immigrant households" and compare their incomes and tax payments to households headed by native-born U.S. citizens.
