Alana Goodman of the Washington Free Beacon reports an inconvenient fact for Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.
Corporate tax hike advocate Tim Walz had his China travel company shut down by the Nebraska government for failing to pay a minor business operating tax in 1998, according to corporate records.
Educational Travel Adventures, Inc., which Walz founded with his wife in 1995 to run group trips to China, was dissolved by Nebraska’s secretary of state for “non-payment of occupational taxes”—just $26 annually—in April 1998. The company was left defunct for years, even as Walz continued to organize group tours to China.
In 2008, after Walz was elected to Congress, he repaid 10 years of back taxes and interest, amounting to $235, to get the company reinstated, records show.
The tax slip-up is at odds with Walz’s policies as governor of Minnesota, where he oversaw some of the most aggressive hikes on businesses in the country. House Republicans are investigating his former company, Educational Travel Adventures, as a potential target of Chinese government influence operations.
Walz continued to lead student exchange trips to China for four years after the company was shut down, before founding another corporation with the same name in Minnesota in 2002. News reports indicate that he stopped running the trips one year later.
Nebraska corporate attorney J.L. Spray said Nebraska businesses are required to pay the occupational tax to remain in good standing. He said business owners sometimes fail to pay the fees due to “negligence, and the fact that they’d just as soon have the company dissolved.”
The registered agent for Walz’s company, Nebraska attorney Terry Curtiss, did not respond to a request for comment.
Walz’s company, Educational Travel Adventures, Inc., has drawn scrutiny from House Republicans. Oversight Committee chairman James Comer said he was concerned about reports that the student exchange trips were subsidized by the Chinese government and that Walz may have been “targeted by or recruited for CCP influence operations.”
