A new report claims that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has built a network of 78 subsidiaries in 15 offshore tax havens to keep its payment of U.S. corporate taxes down to 2 percent of revenues.

The Global Post reports that Arkansas-based Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, has assets worth at least $76 billion through shell companies located in Luxembourg and the Netherlands, based on the new study.

The report says Wal-Mart does not list these subsidiaries in its annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A Wal-Mart spokesman immediately criticized the report, produced by the liberal tax reform advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness, because it was co-authored by an official from the United Food and Commercial Workers union. The UFCW has blasted Wal-Mart for years for blocking the unionization of its workers and paying low wages and benefits.


Here’s more from the Global Post: 
“The report said Wal-Mart’s subsidiaries in the tax havens owned at least 25 of its 27 foreign operations doing business in countries such as the United Kingdom, China and Japan.
“Wal-Mart has 22 shell companies in Luxembourg, where it does not have a single store, and it paid less than 1 percent in tax there on $1.3 billion in profits from 2010 to 2013, the report said.
“… Wal-Mart paid $6.2 billion in U.S. federal income tax last year, or nearly 2 percent of all corporate income. … Wal-Mart also paid more than $10 billion in payroll taxes on its 1.3 million US workers.”