Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
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."
Allen Shepherd, a former history professor at Chadron State College who traveled to China with Walz in 1998, told the Washington Free Beacon that it was "quite an eye-opening tour for all of us to be over there and see how much of the rest of the world lives."
Shepherd said Walz organized the trip because he "had the contacts over there" in academia and government.
"It was my impression that our guides were somehow connected with the government," said Shepherd.
"To a certain extent I think you have to have touch with the government over there, because the government didn’t just let you walk around the country."
Shepherd said the tour was largely educational, and he and Walz met with Chinese academics who were seeking advice on how to build their country’s university system.
After Educational Travel Adventures was shut down, Walz continued to organize student trips to China, including at least two tours in 1998 and 2001. In 2002, he incorporated another company under the same name in Minnesota but stopped the trips a year later.
When Walz ran for Congress in 2006, he highlighted his record as a local businessman who "established a small business called Educational Travel Adventures, Inc. through which he conducts annual educational trips to China for high school students," according to an archived version of his campaign website.
One year after he was elected to Congress, Walz cleaned up the tax error by paying 10 years of back-taxes and interest to get Educational Travel Adventures reinstated in Nebraska. He then immediately filed an application to dissolve the company, according to corporate records.
Walz has a long record of pushing for aggressive tax hikes on businesses. In a speech to labor unions this month, Walz said the government needs to force "corporations [to] pay their fair share."
As governor, he "doubled down on [Minnesota’s] status as a high-tax state even as most states have moved in a different direction," according to the Tax Foundation, becoming the only governor to institute a surtax on capital gains income, and raising taxes on corporate foreign income, wages, and transportation.
Walz’s tax policy led the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy to name Minnesota’s tax system as the most "progressive" in the United States.
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