They certainly do pay taxes, my late uncle helped them file taxes (talking about unorganized receipts, one had every documentation of his income/expenses, such as sales receipts, just randomly tacked to a wall). Payroll taxes (doing odd jobs for cash) and Social Security tax are the taxes they may not be paying when one says "They don't pay taxes", which the SS tax I guess was allowed for them to not pay it, on the agreement they won't use it when they reach retirement. However, I have seen some in the Social Security office, but who knows why they were there. They pay property taxes, so can use the school bus (drop the Amish kids off at the rural Amish school instead of the city public school). Chinese and Amish kids on the same bus, now that is diversity.
They do alot of manual labor. Parents got an expansion to their house, and these guys were getting paid something like $6.50/hour, and the actual receipt showed a tiny charge for his horse's food/water. Taxes or no taxes, regular contractors are not charging anywhere close to that low. Problem is, they won't show up to finish building your house if it's harvesting season, so delays in the fall are normal. If you know exactly what you want done, they can do it.....but if they know an easier or better way to do it, they won't share that with you and do it the wrong way and say "That's what you told me to do".
They make up 1/4 of the 20+ vendors at the weekly farmer's market, not all are food, one or two have Amish built furniture and/or crafts. There are some stores on the major highways selling amish cheese or furniture. I'm sure they make more from that than they do from the tiny white 'Eggs' sign on a lonely county gravel road nets them.
See them all the time at Walmart, of course never in the electronics section..... The amish women mob the office supply section for some reason. Often also seen getting toilet paper. Sometimes they do shopping for others (elderly neighbors for example), sometimes the purchases are a little questionable (one time it was something weird like the only thing the guy bought was 6 large jars of mayonnaise and 3 cans of whipped cream, and he set them on the conveyor belt in like a pyramid formation.) One guy bought like 20 buckets of ice cream. Buying for all the neighbors, or the next sunday church social, I don't know.
Every sect is different/sets different rules. From what I gather, they can use a phone or car but not own one. Even if they ever did own a phone, it would never be allowed in the house. Phone going off during mealtime when the family is gathered around the table would be a mortal sin.
20 years ago I would see one at a tavern every Friday night. When a group was building my parent's house they had a 6-pack of 'Mike's Hard Lemonade', and there was some debates/jokes amongst us non-amish whether they knew the lemonade had alcohol in it when they bought it. And they were smirking at my dad when he was washing dishes, as that's not something the Amish men would ever do. And when I first started working at the Walmart warehouse there was a horse parked outside, as one of the workers was Amish.
Mennonites are also around here, but not as numerous. Not much to say about them other than their clothing is old fashioned similar to amish, but noticeably different. And the Amish have horses, the Mennonites drive minivans like a crazy person.
