Walmart dodged US tax on $2 billion by routing cash through multiple countries, whistleblower says

[douglas9]

Walmart, the world’s biggest company, underpaid US taxes on nearly $2 billion worth of offshore cash, according to whistleblower documents filed by a former Walmart executive to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2011, and recently obtained by Quartz.

The firm avoided nearly $200 million in taxes on that money and “dramatically” overstated its foreign tax credits in 2009 and 2010 by routing payments from Luxembourg to the United States via the United Kingdom and not declaring they came from a tax haven, the whistleblower wrote.

If Walmart claimed all the tax credits, it could have improperly avoided paying close to $600 million in total via the maneuvers, according to the files. The whistleblower argued in the documents that the company should owe all that money to the IRS. A second former executive, who shared the files with Quartz, confirmed the whistleblower’s allegations.

Walmart denied any wrongdoing. “The transactions brought to our attention were appropriately reported to and audited by the IRS,” a spokesman said in an emailed statement. “The tax years covering this matter were closed by the IRS more than seven years ago.”

The spokesman declined to say whether the company explicitly told the IRS that the money originated in Luxembourg, rather than the United Kingdom.

https://qz.com/1756717/whistleblower-alleges-walmart-engineered-2-billion-tax-dodge/

[Ohiogal]

1. You mean

Dumpy’s corporate tax cut wasn’t enough for them?

[Newest Reality]

2. Well,

Maybe we can find a way to get them some much needed corporate welfare? Obviously, they are the very neediest on the planet.

Well, here, we can certainly cut those pesky welfare food SNAP things and save billions, so anything is possible. Useless eaters are really expendable, (oh, come on, let's just admit it openly) but profits are the most important thing there is in life and even its very meaning. A loss in profits is very, very painful to the takers of it. We can choke the poor for about 4.2-Billion if we cut enough of them off, that means a lot of poor kids may expire along the way and that's...a savings!

Let's bring the joy of profit to the owners of the means of production and do our best to make sure that the surplus of our blood, sweat and tears labor is their assured means to obtaining the real thing in life. After all, isn't it written that we exist for that reason?

[Igel]

3. The problem with the claim is that there's no claim.

There's a contingency. "If."

Moreover, the contingency's from 2011. That's 8 years ago, 8 years in which either the matter might have been settled or repaired.

There's a claim, an allegation, as to an abuse the might have happened. But what's needed before I go all outrage is evidence that it did happen. There are too many actual things to be upset about without looking for "maybe this happened".


And Walmart and its stockholders aren't owners of the means of production.