Mid Hudson Times, Wednesday, January 6, 2016
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Town of Newburgh, Wal-Mart reach tax settlement
ments to chip away at its property tax
bills, costing local governments several
million dollars a year in lost revenues and
legal expenses.”
The report cites a 2007 article in the
Wall Street Journal, “Wal-Mart Cuts
Taxes by Paying Rent to Itself.”
“As the world’s biggest retailer, WalMart Stores Inc. pays billions of dollars a
year in rent for its stores,” WSJ reporter
Jesse Drucker wrote. “Luckily for WalMart, in about 25 states it has been paying
Wal-Mart is due to collect a tax refund of approximately $24,000 from the Newburgh Enlarged
City School District.
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he said, until 2019.
Orange County will owe roughly the
same amount of money to the company,
Piaquadio said. “Our taxes are almost the
same as the county’s,” he said.
The Orange County Real Property Tax
Service lists the 2015 full-market value of
the property as $18,947,400.
The lawsuit was one of many the retail
giant has filed since the beginning of
2005, according to Good Jobs First, a
Washington D.C.-based, non-profit
research center.
“An examination of all of Wal-Mart’s
giant distribution centers in operation as
of (2005) showed that 40 percent have had
an assessment challenge - this despite
the fact that many of the warehouses
had previously been granted property tax
abatements when they were first built,”
the Good Jobs 2011 report “Shifting
the Burden for Vital Public Services:
Walmart’s Tax Avoidance Schemes”
states.
Though these challenges are not illegal,
the report claims the company “systematically challenges property tax assess-
most of that rent to itself and then deducting that amount from its state taxes.”
The report states that, by 2009, most
states had passed reforms preventing the practice, which involved stores
being placed under ownership of a real
estate-investment trust.
In 2012, a lawsuit was also filed by
Lowe’s Companies Inc., which led to a tax
reassessment of its property, located near
Wal-Mart on Route 300, spanning 2008 to
2010.