Last year, I posted about Wal-Mart’s aggressive stance on paying property taxes; not surprisingly, Wal-Mart isn’t a fan of paying property tax and has challenged a disproportionately high percentage of assessments for its stores (more than 2,100 property tax challenges nationwide). I titled the piece “Does Wal-Mart Want Your Kid To Read?”
Flash forward to this weekend. I was desperately searching for canning jars (a little known fact about taxgirl: I enjoy gardening). I called around and found a store that purported to have Mason jars, so we piled into the car and headed out. Along the way, at Route 202 and Swedesford Road near Berwyn, we saw a sign advertising a new Wal-Mart. There is no Wal-Mart near our home, and quite frankly, I’ve never had need for one. But if anyone has canning jars, it would be Wal-Mart, and the location was convenient. So, we decided to give it a try.
We pulled into the parking lot only to discover that the Wal-Mart had not yet opened. As we were leaving, I happened to notice something peculiar painted on the pavement. In giant white letters, at one of the intersections in the lot, the word “YEILD” (sic) was carefully painted. And then again. At every yield in the lot, the word “YEILD” (sic) is painted in letters at least 12 inches tall.
Apparently, the folks that painted the drive never heard of the “i before e” rule.
Hmm. Perhaps Wal-Mart should reconsider its stance on funding local schools…
I am shocked you stopped at a walmart!! Your local health food store will probably have canning jars as will your grocery store. There are many online businesses that sell canning jars. In fact, I bought my juicer from an online business that specializes in canning supplies.
2 things – I live a mile from a Super Wal-Mart (24 hour with grocery section) and am in there just about every day. I built my ebay business around selling items from Wal-Mart.
I have been in our Wal-Mart several times to discover signs in the produce department with words spelled incorrectly. The sign over the office supply section says ” STATIONARY.” As in, not moving, not as in, writing paper and envelopes. This is a professionally made sign – not a piece of poster board scribbled by an employee.
And don’t get me started on all of the signs with an apostrophe “s” making a word plural. UGH!
When bringing this to management’s attention, well, they pretty much didn’t care.
Ahh, but that’s the thing! I called two grocery stores (Acme and Whole Foods). Neither had any. The clerk at Whole Foods recommended that I go to K-Mart.
In rural NC, where I grew up, I would have known exactly where to go. It’s a little tougher in Philly.
Since then, my neighbor has recommended that I try my local hardware store – who knew!
Taxgirl, please stop this Anti-Walmart nonsense. They are a company that has the misfortune of being successful. I’ve heard the stories about how they abuse their workers and so on, but I don’t think the company has made it’s fortune based on those incidents. They have an amazing logistics infrastructure that helps them get products to customers efficiently, they have the buying power to get concessions out of suppliers, and they focus on inventory that turns over. They are successful because they recognized what people want and are generally able to deliver.
No tax payer should be expected to pay more in taxes than they absolutely have to. If Wal-Mart thinks they are being overcharged on property taxes (and I imagine a lot of localities would like to hit employers for as much as they can), then Wal-Mart should exercise their right to fight those overcharges. Even if they aren’t being overcharged, they should have the right to challenge those amounts, as all property tax payers should.
Finally, shame on you for equating property taxes to education dollars. Yes, property taxes do go into the pot that education comes out of. But local government is responsible for how tax dollars are spent. I certainly can’t tell the government how to spend my property tax dollars, and Wal-Mart can’t either. So to say that Wal-Mart fighting their property tax assessments hurts education budgets is not a fair characterization- saying the lower property tax revenues in local governments caused the local government to cut back on education is a much better representation. After all, local governments can cut other areas or raise taxes rather than invading education budgets.
Having said all that, I do enjoy the blog and I’ll be back. Enjoy your week. 😉
I don’t work for Wal-Mart, I never have. I shop there regularly and I’m glad that I get things there less expensively than other places. I have had some issues with a few particular items, but they have always made good on them.
I’m not anti-Walmart. Just because I don’t care to shop there doesn’t mean that I have a grudge against them.
That said, I agree that a company has the right to be aggressive with respect to their taxes. I represent clients in just that position. I do think, however, that there is clear evidence that Wal-mart does it disproportionately. Wal-mart has fewer than 4,000 stores in the US and has challenged assessments, according to my sources, at least 2,100 times.
At least one of Wal-mart’s tax strategies has been ruled to “lack economic substance” – in other words, they tried to do one way what they were not allowed to do another. The post about that is here: http://www.taxgirl.com/wal-mart-rolls-back-tax-cuts/
The abuse of the workers (in terms of breaks, etc.) and illegal workers (at least 2 federal crackdowns in more than 20 states) are well documented in federal indictments and class action suits: google away!
And I must disagree with your statement that Wal-Mart can’t tell the government how to spend tax dollars. As one of the largest taxpayers in many of the localities where they operate, they certainly can and I’m sure that they do. I say this with more than a little bit of background in this area as it applies to other companies – on both sides of the coin. Taxpayers, especially big ones, drive economic policy.
I do think it’s a fair characterization to say that property taxes fund education – there isn’t much discretion there. In my neck of the words, they’re actually referred to as “school taxes.” They’re not taking from one pot to fund another – unless they’re raising local income taxes to supplement. I don’t know many taxpayers that want to pay more in taxes so that Wal-Mart doesn’t have to.
All of that said… I’m glad that you like the blog! 🙂
TaxGirl – I didn’t get that you were anti-WalMart. I did understand that you were inconvenienced by misinformation, and noticed a glaring spelling error on their coporate property. I think siredge flew off the handle!
I don’t think Wal-Mart holds an exclusive license on poor spelling. Here in WA (state), down by the state capitol approximately half of the freeway signs say ‘capitol’ while the other half say ‘capital’ (and the capitol is certainly not a center of capital).
Wal-Mart is what is, and consumers who shop there make it what it is. Whether that’s an informed choice they’re making is another matter, but it’s their choice.
“The Wal-Mart Effect” is an excellent book.
BTW, I still think you’re overly simplifying the Wal-Mart NC tax case. That wasn’t a simple case of no economic substance, it was a case of using the REIT and separate state rules that NC utilizes against NC. Wal-Mart was far more in the right on this case then NC. Notice that that strategy has been closed by statute now in many jurisdictions, which certainly implies that it ‘worked’ before.
To me, it would be completely proper for a company to challenge 100% of their property tax assessments that the company’s management felt were incorrect. I have worked with the local taxation authorities and have noticed that errors are easily made on small, relatively simple assessments. I can certainly imagine many errors would crop up on such large assessments as Wal-Mart stores would involve, and that some (if not many) would be material to that particular store. Please remember that Wal-Mart is not stupid when it comes to money- they are not going to have expensive attorneys file petitions and appeals about property taxes if they don’t think there is a more substantial likelihood of receiving a lower assessment net of the attorney costs. As such, to insinuate that the sheer number of assessments they challenge is evidence of their desire to starve the education of school children rather than to correct errors and avoid undue taxes seems an unfair characterization and seems anti Wal-Mart. If it is not intended as such, I would welcome clarification.
Wal-Mart isn’t perfect. I’ve read some news articles on the abuses that have taken place at Wal-Mart. I find that it appears some things took place that should not have. I didn’t reach the conclusion that the corporate headquarters had endorsed the bad behaviors but rather that store or regional managers had been behind them. The company should own up when their people do wrong and respond accordingly by seeking to make victims whole and taking disciplinary action against the offenders as appropriate. I don’t defend them if they truly have done wrong and not made good on it. But perhaps that should be a separate discussion, as this is about property tax assessments, education, and public misspelling.
Yes, big employers can have a great deal of sway in the local community, but that isn’t absolute. When a grocery store chain from another state tried to put in a store in a location near my childhood home, their permit was denied because it was too close to the local high school, which was across the street. Yet only 2 or so years later, a grocery store for the chain with local headquarters was built across the street from the junior high. It would seem that the local citizens (many of which were employees of the chain) wanted their chain to be more successful, so the city council had to realize that they would face backlash if they supported the chain from out of town rather than coming up with the objection about the school (which seemed contrived, else the following store would also have run afoul of it).
I imagine employees are likely to turn on their employer politically if they think that their employer will stiff their kids education. The politicians, while certainly seeking to curry favor with large taxpayers, also realize that it takes a majority of voters when reelection comes around. So I don’t see the local authorities taking away dollars from education just because Wal-Mart says to.
I imagine various states and jurisdictions allocate their funds in different fashions, so perhaps in some areas it specifically is money that would have gone to education. I still don’t see why Wal-Mart should pay the taxes. If the funds really were significant to the local school district, why not fight the taxes and then give the funds as a charitable donation so that they at least get credit for choosing to give the school the money rather than being forced to do so?
As a note, it certainly is nice to be involved in a community where people can disagree without being flamed. I’m glad the worst said about me is that I “flew off the handle”, which certainly does happen once in a while. 😉
This is too funny. I wonder if the parking lot was painted by a disgruntled worker or a product of underfunded public schools.
Without getting into the argument of them paying their fair share of taxes, there is just too many reports of abuse to ALL be fake.
“Supply and demand”, is what Wal-Mart is all about. By the way,is it grammatically correct to write “I posted about…”, or is that a nouveau way of saying I posted a letter (or message) concerning…? From what I hear on the television news and read in publications, I think everyone should brush up on their grammar and punctuation. Have you noticed the over usage of the words:”put” and “basically?”