Taxes
Until the mid-1990s, Walmart took out corporate-owned life insurance policies on its employees including "low-level" employees such as janitors, cashiers, and stockers. This type of insurance is usually purchased to cover a company against financial loss when a high-ranking employee (i.e. management) dies, and is usually known as "Key Man Insurance." Critics derided Walmart as buying what they called "Dead Peasants Insurance" or "Janitor Insurance." Critics, as well as the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, charge that the company was trying to profit from the deaths of its employees, and take advantage of the tax law which allowed it to deduct the premiums. The practice was stopped in the mid-1990s when the federal government closed the tax deduction and began to pursue Walmart for back taxes.
Read more about this topic: Criticism Of Walmart
Famous quotes containing the word taxes:
“As I went about with my father when he collected taxes, I knew that when taxes were laid some one had to work to earn the money to pay them.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“The goof man, in dealing with his people, taxes them with luxury.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“...if I were to be murdered I would not want my murderer executed. I would not want my death avenged. Especially by government—which can’t be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill.”
—Helen Prejean (b. 1940)