Nearly a dozen Senate Democrats are urging IRS CEO Frank Bisignano to drop a newly proposed citizenship and work authorization checkbox from the final version of the 2026 Form 1040.
The question, which appears in a new “Other Information” section on the draft version of the 2026 federal income tax return, asks: “At the time you file your return, are you, and your spouse if filing jointly, a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, or an alien lawfully authorized to work in the U.S.?” There are “Yes” or “No” boxes for both spouses to check.
Advocates for immigrants fear the answers could be used to deport workers or their spouses who are in the country without authorization.
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The group of 11 Senate Democrats, led by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Ron Wyden of Oregon, and Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, said in a letter to Bisignano that adding an immigration question for the first time “appears to serve no legitimate tax administration purpose and risks increasing the tax gap by hundreds of billions of dollars.”
“The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) does not need this checkbox to collect taxes. Nonresidents already file Form 1040-NR, and the agency checks work authorization against Social Security Administration data,” the letter states. “Turning the 1040 into an immigration tracker actively sabotages voluntary tax compliance and undermines the IRS’s core tax collection responsibilities. Public trust is already at a low point after the IRS illegally handed over the private data of more than 42,000 taxpayers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Putting this question on the front page of the Form 1040 will only discourage people from filing altogether.”
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Citing Yale Budget Lab estimates, the senators say that “weaponizing tax filing” could cost the federal government $313 billion over the next decade and endanger the $66 billion that unauthorized workers currently pay in taxes each year.
The letter also pushes for the release of the updated tax gap estimate, which has been delayed almost a year. The last time that the IRS released a tax gap report was in October 2024, estimating the tax gap for the tax year 2022 was approximately $700 billion per year. The next report covering tax year 2023 was supposed to be released in fall 2025.
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The senators hinted that the IRS purposely omitted the largest parts of the tax gap attributable to corporate income tax, income from flow-through entities, foreign activities, and digital assets.
The letter is also signed by Senate Democrats Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Alex Padilla of California, Peter Welch of Vermont, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Patty Murray of Washington, and Cory Booker of New Jersey.
Photo credit: sweet_tomato/Freepik
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Tags: Congress, democrats, immigrants, Income Taxes, IRS, Senate, tax returns, Taxes, Trump administration
