The Seattle Times/P-I/F-W recently swooned in ecstasy over Bill & Melinda Gates' charitable contributions. According to the Fish-Wrapper, the "newly mature" Gates family is setting up a pool of money (and taking it as a tax write-off) to fund computer upgrades in public libraries in several states. The money will be used to purchase new computers loaded (surprise!) with Microsoft software. But while the mainstream press drools over Bill's moves to buy a new niche market, Microsoft is busy weaseling its way out of paying $20 to $30 million a year in state sales taxes. Here's how the scheme works:

Each time a computer hardware manufacturer sells a computer with Windows software on it, s/he pays a licensing fee to Microsoft. Microsoft makes $3.5 billion of its annual revenues on licensing fees alone. So, to outsmart the Washington State Dept. of Revenue, Microsoft financial planners decided to create a subsidiary company, Microsoft Licensing, Inc., and ship the 30 or so people who handle Microsoft's licensing agreements to Reno, Nevada. Never mind the fact that the software itself (made in Washington State) generates all this revenue in the first place.

Bill Gates is rich enough to build his own Microsoft "campus," call many of his actual employees temps so as to avoid paying benefits, work both permanent and temporary employees so hard they never leave the office, contract out work to India and the local state pen, assemble a team of marketing gurus working 24-hour shifts to force a shoddy product onto an overwhelmed universe, and still have time left over to build (well, have someone else build for him) a palatial, subterranean compound on Lake Washington. No wonder he thinks he doesn't have to pay taxes. Well, he's right. However...

You don't have to pay taxes, either. Here's how: set up a subsidiary of yourself. File incorporation papers. Then relocate a portion of your personality to, say, Cuba or Iraq or Medina or Mercer Island or some other foreign country outside U.S. tax jurisdiction. The precedent, courtesy Chairman Bill, is clear: the baser elements of your personality are responsible for earning all of your income. They're somewhere else. Somewhere far away. The nice part of you, the part that's cooperating fully with the law, is really just a corporate shell. Or a holding company. It's demonstrable, and, what's more--always a happy bonus when transnational corporations are figuring out ways to deceive the public--it just happens to be true! The part of you that earns the rent really is debased! What could be easier? Call today; your tax professional probably already has the full details.