Walmart's Executive Bonuses Have Cost Taxpayers $104 Million Since 2009

Since 2009, Walmart has ducked $104 million in taxes by exploiting a tax loophole around bonus payments to just eight top executives, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF).The retail giant is using a longstanding tax loophole for deducting executive pay that comes in the form of stock options and other bonuses tied to company performance. The eight top employees tracked in the IPS/ATF report earned $298 million in deductible compensation from 2009 to 2014, creating nearly $300 million in write-downs for the company. Those deductions over the years translate into a $104 million reduction in what the company has had to pay the Internal Revenue Service.
That $104 million "would have been enough to cover the cost of free school lunches for 33,000 children for those six years," the report notes. Walmart reported a $17 billion profit last year.
A Walmart spokeswoman told the Huffington Post that the ATF/IPS report is "flawed" and defended the company by saying that "we comply with federal tax laws." No one is disputing the legality of the executive compensation deductions revealed in the IPS/ATF report, but a pair of lawmakers have been trying to reform the system so that large, highly profitable corporations would no longer be able to get taxpayer subsidies for their massive executive pay packages.

Tired of being ripped off, yet?