‘Amnesty Bonuses’ in Tax Code: Illegal Immigrants to Receive Earned Income Tax Credit

President Barack Obama has promoted his recent executive action on immigration by arguing that he’s only deferring action – holding off on enforcement of the current immigration laws until an immigration reform he approves of passes Congress. But that's not really true; in fact there’s a way for illegal immigrants immediately to receive “amnesty bonuses,” as Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska terms it.

Here’s how. A recent Homeland Security Committee hearing on immigration revealed an alarming consequence of President Obama’s executive amnesty—that illegal immigrants with deferred status may be able to receive the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Moreover, this person, who is here in the U.S. unlawfully, could be able to file an amended tax return for up to the last three tax years, possibly receiving upwards of $24,000 in tax credits.

The discovery was made by Eileen J. O’Connor, a tax lawyer and the former head of the tax division of the United States Department of Justice, who used her congressional testimony in front of the Senate Homeland Security Committee to explain it. “The law makes a social security number a requirement of eligibility to receive the earned income credit,” O’Connor explained.

“But in 1999, the Chief Counsel’s office of IRS ruled (in a non-binding, non-precedential way, but no one but the IRS pays attention to those disclaimers) that when a person receives a social security number, he can file amended returns to claim the credit for the three preceding years during which he did not. The logic is puzzling: the credit is not available if you don’t have a social security number, but you can receive it retroactively for years during which you did not qualify for it because you didn’t have a social security number.”

Senator Sasse, who along with Senator Ron Johnson has written a letter addressed to the inspector general of the U.S. Treasury Department, has released a statement commenting on the “amnesty bonuses.”

“By offering illegal aliens new payments under the Earned Income Tax Credit, the IRS may encourage fraud from those claiming children living in other countries. The Administration may have blown open the doors for fraud with amnesty bonuses of more than $24,000 to those who receive deferred action,” Sasse says in the statement.

“This is basic economics: if you want more of something, you subsidize it. By subsidizing illegal entry with four years’ worth of new tax credits, the IRS would promote lawlessness. This program severely undermines the White House’s lip-service to enforcing the law and would increase the burden on law-abiding taxpayers.”