How Wal-Mart's Waltons Maintain Their Billionaire Fortune: Taxes

[joeybee12]

Visitors to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, leave appreciative notes on a glass wall near the entrance.

"Thanks Alice!" reads one. "Merci Alice Walton, pour la vision!" reads another.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) heiress Alice Walton founded Crystal Bridges in 2011 in a wooded ravine next to her childhood home, supplying dozens of paintings from her personal collection. Bankrolled by more than $1 billion in donations from her family, the museum attests to the Waltons' generosity and vast wealth. It's also a monument to their skill at preserving that fortune across generations.

America's richest family, worth more than $100 billion, has exploited a variety of legal loopholes to avoid the estate tax, according to court records and Internal Revenue Service filings obtained through public-records requests. The Waltons' example highlights how billionaires deftly bypass a tax intended to make sure that the nation's wealthiest contribute their share to government rather than perpetuate dynastic wealth, a notion of fairness voiced by supporters of the estate tax like Warren Buffett and William Gates Sr.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/wal-marts-waltons-maintain-billionaire-040100941.html

[Scurrilous]

1. K & R

[rurallib]

2. the Waltons' generosity

may I suggest a better use for their "generosity?"

[jmowreader]

3. Interesting idea, and I did the math

Let us say we were to strip the Waltons of all $150 billion of their wealth, and divide it among the 2.2 million Walmart employees. It comes to a bit over $68,000 per worker. I decided to break it down to passing out the money over 10 years, and it comes to a little over $200 per paycheck. It would help, but as shitty as Walmart pays there'd still be a gap between Walmart Pay and a living wage.

Problem is, do you really want to reduce the Waltons to living over steam grates? I agree that it sounds quite tempting to do that, but...I dunno, maybe they could get jobs at Walmart but with Alice's history of repeat DUI how would she get to work in the morning?

I would be just as happy with leaving the six Walton heirs $5 billion apiece and using the rest to fix the roads their trucks are tearing apart. Five billion is more money than anyone can spend in their lifetime - hell, they could become addicted to meth, coke, $20 cigars AND heroin, eat lobster three times a day and drive gold-plated Rolls-Royces and still not spend five billion dollars in their lives.