This is what's wrong with this country: The wealthy and successful offshoring money they should be paying taxes on and starving the government. CHEATING US ALL.
Bloomberg
A new study has found Wal-Mart has at least 78 offshore subsidiaries and branches, more than 30 created since 2009 and none mentioned in U.S. securities filings. Overseas operations have helped the company cut more than $3.5 billion off its income tax bills in the past six years, its annual reports show.
Units in Luxembourg -- where the company has no stores -- reported $1.3 billion in profits between 2010 and 2013 and paid tax at a rate of less than 1 percent, according to the report.
Of course, Wal~Mart says this is all misleading because a "union" has produced the report:
Randy Hargrove, a Wal-Mart spokesman, called the report incomplete and “designed to mislead” by its union authors. He said the company has “processes in place to comply with applicable SEC and IRS rules, as well as the tax laws of each country where we operate.”
More over the orange thing.
Wal~Mart made about $137 billion last year:
Wal-Mart paid $6.2 billion in U.S. income tax last year, Hargrove, the company spokesman, said, or “nearly 2 percent of all corporate income tax collected by the U.S. Treasury.”
They are cheating, whether it is technically legal or not. They are involved in a giant technical shell game to evade paying their fair share of taxes, like you and I have to do. They are cheating and they are actively harming people's lives with this.
They benefit from all the government services WE ALL have to pay for, they pay their help so poorly their workers are known to be very reliant on public assistance to get by.
And their $6.2 billion is an interesting number.... Report: Walmart Workers Cost Taxpayers $6.2 Billion In Public Assistance
Walmart’s low-wage workers cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $6.2 billion in public assistance including food stamps, Medicaid and subsidized housing, according to a report published to coincide with Tax Day, April 15.
Here's a
nice pdf report on the data.
So it looks like Wal Mart pays just enough in taxes to compensate the US government for all the public assistance their employees need just to live day to day despite 'having a job'.
ALL corporations must be made to pay their fair share of taxes or they should be frozen and taxed punitively.
Americans are, again, tolerating way more than they should even think about tolerating.
We are being fucked by these corporate tax-avoidance games.