The Washington-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) released a study in July 2013 that refutes the idea that immigrants in the country illegally don’t pay taxes and that legalizing them would be bad for the U.S. economy.

Not only are unauthorized immigrants paying taxes at all levels of government, they’re paying a lot of them, the study found. The report shoots down the common complaint heard from Tea Party groups, Republicans and other conservative opponents of comprehensive immigration reform that immigrants don’t pay their fair share of taxes and are a liability to the nation’s economic growth.

According to ITEP researchers, “the 11.2 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States are already taxpayers, and that their local, state and federal tax contributions would increase under reform.”

The report considered state-by-state estimates on the state and local tax contributions of immigrants here illegally and found that they collectively payed about $10.6 billion in 2010, “ranging from less than $2 million in Montana to more than $2.2 billion in California.”

Other states that ranked high on tax contributions from unauthorized immigrants were Texas with $1.6 billion, New York with $744 million and Florida with $706 million. The higher the population of undocumented immigrants and workers, the higher the tax revenues from them, simple as that.

If Congress were to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill, the tax receipts from these immigrants would increase in every state, according to the study.

“If the 11.2 million undocumented immigrants in the United States were to gain legal status, their state and local tax contributions would increase by more than $2 billion over their current tax contributions,” the report said. “Personal income taxes account for 74 percent of the revenue gain, increasing collections by almost $1.6 billion. Sales and excise taxes would increase by $420 million, and property taxes would grow by $76 million. The overall state and local effective tax rate paid by this immigrant population would increase from 6.4 to 7.0 percent, on average.”

Unauthorized immigrants, besides paying shares of their income to state and local tax agencies, also pay sales and excise taxes when they buy goods and services -- everything from clothing to gas for their cars to eating at restaurants. They pay property taxes either directly as homeowners or indirectly as renters to their landlords.

The study found that at least half of the unauthorized immigrant population is paying income taxes even without legal status.

“Undocumented immigrants make up 5 percent of the labor force and are a small share of most states’ populations,” the report said. “So, while the aggregate state and local taxes paid by undocumented immigrants in each state may seem modest compared to overall tax collections, their effective rate is close to taxpayers in similar income situations and, in many states, can be higher than the effective tax rates paid by upper income taxpayers.”

Earlier in 2013, a study by the Congressional Budget Office also predicted that legalization of the unauthorized immigrants would boost the U.S. economy, help cut the deficit and help create jobs.The CBO researchers also found that unauthorized immigrants are paying taxes and would pay much more if they were legalized through comprehensive reform.

The Washington-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan research organization that works on tax policy issues at all levels of government. According to the ITEP website, the group’s mission “is to ensure that elected officials, the media, and the general public have access to accurate, timely, and straightforward information that allows them to understand the effects of current and proposed tax policies. ITEP's work focuses particularly on issues of tax fairness and sustainability. ITEP works directly with lawmakers, non-governmental organizations, the public, and the media to achieve these goals.”