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Editorial: Honesty ought to pay

3 1
14.04.2025

Credit: Getty Images.

If you thought that filing your income taxes could lead to you being arrested or even deported, would you pay your taxes?

We’d guess not.

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Yet in its rabid fixation on illegal immigration, the administration of President Donald J. Trump has decided to have the Internal Revenue Service share information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on undocumented immigrants who have been diligently paying taxes on the promise that their files would be confidential.

Beyond possibly breaking laws Congress has passed on the confidentiality of people’s tax information, this broken trust will doubtless discourage millions of undocumented immigrations from paying taxes out of fear of putting themselves at risk. That’s tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue that the governments can kiss goodbye.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem signed a memorandum of agreement last Monday allowing ICE to submit names of undocumented immigrants to the IRS to find their latest reported address. To give this a veneer of legality, the two agencies say the........

© Times Union