This article claims they pay a higher effective tax rate, not more in taxes. A citizen working the same position would pay even more in taxes since they would also have to pay income tax.

Maybe the headline should be that sales + other flat taxes are becoming an increasing burden for low income workers. This is the problem for the illegal immigrants in the study, and even more of a problem for citizens who earn the same amount.

I would be quite surprised if that were true. The illegal immigrants pay a higher tax rate because as some of the poorest people in the country, they are the most affected by regressive taxation (primarily sales taxes, according to this study). As income increases, the distortion from these regressive taxes should decline so the effect of the higher tax brackets that the wealthy are in will become dominant.

Edit: I don’t have time to find data for every state, but here’s federal data from Pew. Federal taxation is progressive and the share of income paid by the highest earners is many times larger than the share paid by the lowest earners.

Sales taxes fucking suck. I grew up in a state where it was nearly 10% on everything, but I could hop in my car and drive 30 minutes across states lines to where it was just 6.1%. Still, when I had to shop local, it was terrible having an entire 1/10th added to the cost of whatever I was buying

You are completely correct; what it’s doing is not presenting new ideas so much as pushing back against the narrative of the freeloading immigrant, which is only supported by cherry-picking what taxes “count” as taxes and ignoring the regressive taxes that you, appropriately, note that most people don’t think of when they say “taxes”.

sales taxes would be fine if they were national and not restricted on things bought sold. Like stocks and bonds and such.