Walmart Is Hiding $76 Billion in Tax Havens
June 19, 2015
Categories:
Workers' Rights
Besides costing U.S. taxpayers $6.2 billion a year in public assistance for its poverty-wage workers, Walmart is depleting the country’s revenue by hiding $76 billion in tax havens around the world.
According to a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness, Walmart has established 78 subsidiaries and branches in 15 offshore tax havens where Walmart doesn’t even have stores and none of them has been publicly reported before. The company has been able to fly under the radar by not listing them in Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) forms where they are supposed to be listed. There’s more, according to the report:
- During the first half of 2014, Walmart took $2.4 billion in low-interest, short-term loans from subsidiaries in tax havens, thereby providing Walmart affiliates in the United States access to foreign earnings without paying U.S. tax, which may transgress the intent of U.S. law.
- Walmart generates about $1.5 billion worth of tax deductions in Luxembourg each year by making phantom interest payments to Wal-Mart International Holdings, Inc. in the United States. By using what tax planners call a hybrid loan, Walmart effectively makes this income disappear for tax purposes in both Luxembourg and the United
States.
