Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Leading US Tech Firms Reap Hundreds Of Millions In Tax Breaks For Hiring Foreign College Grads

Many of America’s most prominent and profitable tech firms receive multi-million dollar tax subsidies for hiring foreign graduates of U.S. universities, according to an analysis published Wednesday.
The report from the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates lower levels of immigration, identified more than $150 million in tax payments that U.S. companies avoided in 2017 thanks to a little-known program known as Optional Practical Training (OPT).
OPT is a George W. Bush administration addition to the F-1 student visa that allows foreign graduates to work in the U.S. for up to 12 months after graduation — with a 24-month extension if the graduate works in a STEM field.
Under U.S. tax law, employers of OPT participants do not have to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes on the wages earned by those foreign graduates. That payroll tax exemption, which has no direct congressional authorization, does not apply to recent American college graduates.
For 2017, the biggest employers of OPT enrollees were household names in tech and consulting sectors. Number one was Amazon, which employed 7,700 OPT students and recent graduates for an estimated tax subsidy of $27.6 million, according to the CIS report.
Read the rest of the story HERE.

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