New report: Walmart has hidden 10s of $BILLIONS of revenue to evade taxes
Americans for Tax Fairness has published their findings of a Walmart tax evasion investigation. I’m not devious enough to quickly understand how Walmart is doing this, and I sure don’t know if what it’s legal, but I’m glad to know eyebrows are being raised.
Their scheme goes something like this: Walmart has lied in corporate earnings filings about how much money they’ve sent overseas. They have stashed that money in secret accounts, mostly in Luxembourg, to avoid paying United States taxes on it. An interesting sidebar is that they now Walmarts wants to bring a lot of that money back into the US in order to expand their operation – again, without paying taxes on the earnings it represents. This just stinks, don’t you think?
Thriving local economies means more health & resilience
Walmart and Target say they help communities overcome health issues and the ill effects of poverty but the reverse is true.Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s Stacey Mitchell writes about the difference between communities with thriving local economies and those dominated by Big Box retail giants:
… study found that counties dominated by a few big firms have … less engaged citizens than those in which economic activity is dispersed across many locally owned businesses. “We find that residents of communities with highly concentrated economies (ed note: where big box stores predominate) tend to vote less and are less likely to keep up with local affairs, participate in associations, engage in reform efforts or participate in protest activities at the same levels as their counterparts in economically dispersed environments (ed note: where small businesses proliferate)…”.
Why block Walmart from north Jersey expansion?
Why is another Walmart in north Jersey a bad thing? Start off by considering these thoughts Rita Louie, Pomona’s Deputy Mayor, shared on Facebook at Dont LET WâL-MâRT RUIN Our TOWN.
Too big, too offensive, too risky, not needed, will put small businesses under, will change the character of the Rt202 corridor forever (in a bad way), will bring crime, cost taxpayers alot of money, destroy our infrastructure, destroy already suffering property values, 18 wheelers going down 202 at pre-dawn hours to make deliveries, traffic backed up onto the PIP in both directions, the remainder of Pomona will become blighted when all the stores close and we will be left holding the bag…shall I go on? Is this worth the risk so you could get a cheap shirt made in China?
Is Wal-Mart helping you “live better?”
Your tax dollars are still subsidizing Wal-Mart’s health care crisis. Your good jobs are still being shipped overseas so Wal-Mart can import over 70% of its goods from communist China. Your neighbors are still earning poverty-level Wal-Mart wages so America’s richest family can line their pockets with Wal-Mart’s $12 billion in profits.
Are you living better yet?
Nation-state Walmart store “police” use harsh interrogation tactics
Excerpt from article by Barbara Ehrenreich.
Justin Kenward, who worked at a Target store in Chino CA for three years, wrote to tell me about his six hour interrogation, in 2003, by the store’s “Asset Protection” agents, who accused him of wrongly giving a fellow employee a discount on a video game a year earlier:
After about an hour of trying to tell them that I don’t remember any thing about that day let alone that transaction, I had to use the restroom. I asked if I could and was denied. This goes on for about another hour when I say “Look I have to pee, bad, can I go to the restroom?” Once more I was told no. So I stand up and start walking out the door, and was stopped. At this point I thought to my self “They’re looking to fire me!” So I start to think of ways that transaction might have came to be. I say something like