Dear kempo,
"All WalMart has to do is pull all of it's stores out of the state and place them strategically in surrounding state close the the border of Maryland and WalMart still gets Maryland business but pays sales tax to other states."
This may not be too practical.
The most populous jurisdictions in Maryland are Montgomery, Prince George's, Anne Arundel, Howard, and Baltimore Counties, and Baltimore City.
Lower Montgomery and eastern Prince George's Counties are near to Washington, DC, but I don't think there are any Wal-Marts in DC. I think they may be planning one in the city (which would be easily accessible to parts of eastern Prince George's County, but not to wealthier Montgomery County), but the combination of high taxes, high regulatory requirements, and very expensive land makes it tough for Wal-Mart to execute their strategy there.
Some parts of Montgomery and Prince George's Counties aren't too far from Virginia, but the rest of these jurisdictions really aren't in "Wal-Mart range" of other states.
Between those jurisdictions, Wal-Mart could pull out of the state, and lose the business provided by a population of about 3.5 million or so people with median incomes well above the national average.
sitetest
I see your overall point, but I don't think that Walmart's general target audience is people with median incomes well above the national average. Walmart thrives on selling the basics which pretty much every household can afford. They do sell items such as electronics, but they are mostly base models and lack the higher end models that most upper middle class buyers would want.
The state of Maryland is basically issuing a 8% tax on Walmart. Walmart will have to punish the state or it will be attacked the same way in every other blue state.
It seems like the best course of action would be to close down their lowest performing stores in the state to get the employee numbers down to around 9,000. This will cut the sales tax collected by Walmart by about one third which isn't insignificant. They will also close down any non-revenue generating operations in Maryland as well and relocate those to neighboring states.