TY - BOOK AU - Cascio,Elizabeth U. AU - Lewis,Ethan G. ED - National Bureau of Economic Research. TI - Distributing the Green (Cards): Permanent Residency and Personal Income Taxes after the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 T2 - NBER working paper series PY - 2018/// CY - Cambridge, Mass. PB - National Bureau of Economic Research N1 - July 2018; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers N2 - We explore how permanent residency affects personal income tax participation and net personal income tax payments using variation from the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), which authorized the largest U.S. amnesty to date. We exploit the timing and geographic unevenness of IRCA's legalization programs alongside newly digitized data on personal income taxes in California, home to the majority of applicants. Green Cards induced the previously unauthorized to file state income tax returns at rates comparable to other California residents. While the new returns generated little additional revenue through the end of the 1990s, they did raise the incomes of families with children through new claims of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit UR - https://www.nber.org/papers/w24872 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w24872 ER -