How Walmart’s owners give thanks and give back

Workers at Walmart are using the Black Friday shopping rush to elevate their demands to receive a living wage from the nation’s largest employer and retailer. Among the protesters are 12 who gave up their Thanksgiving feasts and instead went on a 24-hour fast.

But while many Walmart workers and their supporters are making great sacrifices—and taking great risks—to stir its corporate conscience, the family that owns the retailing giant is giving back almost nothing at all.

By 2010, the wealth of Sam Walton’s six heirs was equivalent to that of 41 percent of all American households—over 48 million of them—combined. Yet those six siblings combined have contributed a minuscule $59 million—just 0.04 percent of their total wealth—to the foundation that bears their name.

That's the shocking conclusion of an analysis from Walmart 1 Percent, a project of the union-backed Making Change at Walmart:

The central finding of this report is simple: Our analysis of 23 years' worth of the Walton Family Foundation's tax returns shows that Rob, Jim, Alice and Christy Walton--the second generation Walmart heirs--have contributed almost none of their personal fortune to the foundation which bears their family name.

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For starters, for decades the Waltons have relied on a tax dodge that now bears their name to keep billions of dollars from Uncle Sam. The Walton grantor-retained annuity trust, or Walton GRAT, has allowed billionaires like the Walmart heirs and casino mogul and GOP bag man Sheldon Adelson to shield $100 billion from the IRS since 2000. Named after the tactic lawyer Richard Covey, the dodge was developed for Sam Walton:

GRATs work by rapidly shifting large volumes of stock into a trust fund that is legally required to return that initial investment after two years. The stocks in the trust gain enough value that when it comes time to repay the initial investment there is a substantial amount of stock left over that can be transferred on to some third party without triggering the gift tax.

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As it turns out, his daughter Alice Walton has even better way: Get rid of the estate tax altogether.

With their combined wealth now estimated at $139.9 billion dollars, on paper zeroing out the 40-percent state tax would allow the Waltons to redirect roughly $56 billion from the United States Treasury into the accounts of their heirs. (Because of tax avoidance techniques used by the very rich, the effective estate tax rate is closer to 17 percent.) All those zeroes explain why Alice Walton had been trying to kill the estate tax for years. As USA Today summed it up in 2005:

Led by Sam Walton's only daughter, Alice, the family spent $3.2 million on lobbying, conservative causes and candidates for last year's federal elections. That's more than double what it spent in the previous two elections combined, public documents show.

The Waltons have joined a coterie of wealthy families trying to save fortunes through permanent repeal of the estate tax, government watchdogs say. The election of President Bush and more conservatives to Congress gave momentum to the long-fought effort. The Waltons add more.

How Walmart’s owners give thanks and give back