White House weighing a tax on remittances to Mexico to fund border wallWashington Examiner, Aug 31, 2017, Gabby Morrongiello
President Trump is mulling a tax on cash transfers between immigrants in the U.S. and their relatives in Mexico as a way to fund his promised border wall without forcing American taxpayers to open their wallets, according to sources familiar with the proposal.
Trump first floated the idea of taxing or halting person-to-person wire transfers, known as remittances, during his bid for the White House. A two-page memo released by his campaign last April described a plan "to compel Mexico to pay for the wall" by preventing immigrants from wiring money outside of the U.S. unless they can prove their legal status to law enforcement authorities.
Because the Mexican economy has become so dependent on wages sent home by migrant workers, which surpassed oil revenues as its leading source of foreign income in 2015, Trump said he could convince the country's leaders to make a "one-time payment of $5-10 billion" toward his border wall by threatening to stop the annual flow of billions of dollars from the U.S. to Mexico in the form of cash transfers.
In 2016, Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. sent $27 billion to family members and friends in their native country.
They will live very, very frugally to save as much money as they can to send it back home," Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., told the Washington Examiner.
Rogers introduced a bill in March to levy a 2 percent tax on all cash transfers from "anybody who remits to South America." The legislation, which is currently stuck in committees, would net a little more than $1 billion a year and "comport with President Trump's pledge to build a wall and make [Mexico] pay for it."
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/white-house-weighing-a-tax-on-remittances-to-mexico-to-fund-border-wall/article/2633089
