WASHINGTON â The Trump administration is proposing a new citizenship and work-authorization question for 2026 federal tax returns, a potentially significant change that could affect some immigrant workers, mixed-status families and access to refundable tax credits.
Your immigration status could become part of filing your federal taxes.
— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 3, 2026
The Trump administration is moving to require taxpayers claiming certain refundable tax credits to certify whether they meet federal citizenship or immigration eligibility standards. The IRS says the⌠pic.twitter.com/RpoJs0CR8i
The question appears on draft IRS tax forms for 2026 and asks whether the taxpayer â and a spouse on a joint return â is a U.S. citizen, U.S. national or a noncitizen lawfully authorized to work in the United States.
The requirement is not final. The IRS currently labels the 2026 Form 1040 materials as drafts, meaning the wording and filing requirements could still change before taxpayers submit those returns in 2027.
New question appears on draft 2026 IRS forms
The proposed question gives taxpayers âYesâ and âNoâ options for themselves and, when filing jointly, their spouse.
A similar question also appears in draft Schedule 3-A, which is tied to the administration’s broader effort to change eligibility rules for refundable federal tax credits.
The IRS says Treasury’s proposed regulations would apply federal immigration-related benefit restrictions to refundable portions of four credits: the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, American Opportunity Tax Credit and Adoption Tax Credit.
The administration says the change is intended to prevent people who do not meet federal eligibility standards from receiving refundable benefits and estimates the policy could save taxpayers as much as $2 billion.
Some legal immigrants could also be affected
The potential impact is broader than undocumented immigrants.
Some people who are legally present and authorized to work in the United States could still fail to meet the narrower immigration classifications used under the administration’s proposed benefit rules.
Those potentially affected include some recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, people with Temporary Protected Status and certain temporary workers, including H-1B visa holders.
The proposal comes amid other changes affecting employment-based immigration, including a separate proposal involving the H-1B grace period after job loss.
Researchers estimate major impact on families
Researchers from Boston University, Columbia University and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimate that about 671,000 people, including 309,000 children, could live in families losing access to the Earned Income Tax Credit under the proposal.
They separately estimate about 1.1 million people, including 574,000 children, could be in families affected by changes to the Additional Child Tax Credit.
The groups overlap, so those figures should not simply be added together. Researchers estimate nearly nine in 10 affected children would be U.S. citizens.
Those numbers are independent research estimates, not official Treasury projections.
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ITIN taxpayers already face limits on tax credits
The proposal does not mean undocumented workers currently have unrestricted access to refundable credits.
A qualifying Social Security number is already generally required for the Earned Income Tax Credit, meaning taxpayers filing only with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN, cannot claim the EITC.
ITIN holders can still have federal tax obligations. In 2024, the National Taxpayer Advocate identified about 3.8 million returns involving ITIN taxpayers.
IRS figures cited in reporting on the proposal show taxpayers associated with those returns paid approximately $14.4 billion in income taxes and another $6.5 billion in Social Security and Medicare taxes.
Privacy concerns focus on immigration enforcement
Treasury says tax information collected under the proposal would remain subject to privacy and disclosure protections.
Critics argue that asking people directly about citizenship or lawful work authorization could nevertheless make some immigrant taxpayers reluctant to file.
The concern has been amplified by an earlier Treasury arrangement to provide certain taxpayer information to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A federal court later blocked that data-sharing arrangement over taxpayer privacy concerns, but reporting says the IRS had already provided ICE with addresses associated with about 47,000 people.
Critics including the Center for Taxpayer Rights and the Cato Institute have argued that the proposed checkbox could expand the IRS’s role in immigration enforcement. The administration says its purpose is enforcing eligibility rules for refundable federal benefits.
Taxpayers do not need to change anything yet
The IRS’s 2026 materials remain drafts, and taxpayers should not treat the proposed citizenship question as an existing filing requirement.
Treasury’s underlying regulations are also moving through the federal rulemaking process. Final rules and final IRS forms will determine whether the question appears when Americans file their 2026 tax returns in 2027.
The proposal is part of a broader series of immigration-policy changes, including separate plans affecting work visas and possible increases to U.S. citizenship application fees.
For taxpayers, the key distinction is simple: the citizenship and work-status question is currently proposed, but if finalized, it could change how immigration status is documented directly on the federal income tax return.
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