IRS computers can't handle Bill Gates' tax filing . .

[Deb in IA]

Think YOU'VE got tax headaches?

Poor Bill (pun intended!) can't get all his 000,000,000's into the IRS tax computers.

Maybe it's because the computers don't run Windows . . .

IRS Computers Can't Handle Gates' Taxes

The annual headache of doing our taxes is one that fills most citizens with customary, chronic foreboding. But if the idea of endless form-filling and number crunching seems bad, spare a thought for the poor souls at the Internal Revenue Service. America's principal bean counters must regularly face the gargantuan monstrosity that is Bill Gates' tax return, an undertaking of such magnanimously complex proportions that the agency has had to keep the information of the billionaire's vast fortune on a "special computer."

The perpetrator himself, Microsoft co-founder and Chairman Gates revealed all at a conference in Lisbon: "Their normal computers can't deal with the numbers," he said of the hapless taxmen. "So I am constantly getting these notices telling me I haven't paid something, when really it is just on the wrong computer."

Gates explained the glitch is then followed by charade of correspondence: "Then they will send me another notice telling me how bad they feel, that they sent me a notice that was a mistake."

According to an IRS spokeman, the agency's main computers do not use the Windows operating system. IBM designed the original processing system for the IRS in the 1960s, which was largely tape and disk driven. Believe it or not the same system is used today, processing the bulk of America's tax returns including, presumably at one time at least, that of Gates.

If U.S. authorities are beleaguered by Gates' presence on this earth, so indeed are those across the pond at the EU Commission, after waiting for Microsoft to comply with its antitrust ruling since 2004. Last Monday, though, Gates' company hit back with a letter accusing the regulator of seriously violating Microsoft's "right of defense" and breaking its own rules of procedure, according to a media report. Microsoft says that it has not been given access to many of the documents that back up the EU Commission's charges, and is thus in a poor position to counter its claims.

Being worth $47 billion and the chairman of a multinational corporate behemoth must be a lot harder than it looks. Consider yourselves lucky, folks.

 

[CapeCodTenor]

Man, I'd love to be in his position right now.

 

[HERSEY]

Sounds like maybe he needs to send me a few millions just to help him out of course Poor BILL