Pay Taxes? Chances Are, You Subsidize Wal-Mart

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/06/05/pay-taxes-chances-are-you-subsidize-wal-mart/

Pay Taxes? Chances Are, You Subsidize Wal-Mart

by Tula Connell, Jun 5, 2007

As usual, Wal-Mart is up to its ears in class-action lawsuits filed by its employees. In the latest, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled May 31 that a lawsuit claiming off-the-clock violations could proceed as a class action on behalf of nearly 80,000 current and former Wal-Mart employees.

The retail mega-monster’s treatment of its employees is, unfortunately, an ongoing outrage. But what’s less known is how much Wal-Mart costs all of us as taxpayers.



So here’s the everyday low deal: Wal-Mart’s state and local government economic development subsidies include 39 deals worth more than $200 million in just the past three years. The info is in a new report released this morning by the nonprofit research group Good Jobs First, which updated its landmark 2004 report Shopping for Subsidies.

In conjunction with the report, Good Jobs First’s Wal-Mart Subsidy Watch website enables consumers to select their cities and states and find out how much Wal-Mart subsidies are costing them.

The state with the most new deals is Illinois with nine. It is followed by Florida and Missouri with four each; Arizona, California and Kansas with three each; and Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana and Ohio with two each. Alabama, Maryland, Minnesota, Texas and Wyoming each had one recent deal.

Illinois also accounts for the most deals in the entire Wal-Mart Subsidy Watch database with 38. Following it are Texas (29), Missouri (23), Louisiana (20) and California (18).

FULL story at link.