The Wal-Mart employee benefits package includes life insurance-but
not the sort you might imagine. As Jim Hightower reports in the
Austin Chronicle (May 24, 2002), the mega-retailer has taken
out life insurance on some 350,000 of its employees, naming the
company-not the employee’s survivors-as beneficiary. The policies,
with death benefits as high as $750,000, earn Wal-Mart a tax
deduction while the employee is alive plus a tax-free payout when
the worker bites the dust.
