Bill Gates' Taxes Require Special Computer

NightWulf writes "News AU claims Bill Gates said in an interview, his fortune is so big, that the IRS needs a special computer, because a normal one can't handle the numbers. The IRS must have had to switch from PC's to Macs just for Gates."

Comments

At last, I have something in common with Bill...

[Osrin]

Except the special computer that the IRS use for my taxes is an Altair.

Its not the numbers

[NiteShaed]

Its not that the numbers are too big, its that the EULA he staples to his tax forms require it be processed by 100% MS software.

I don't buy it

[Alex P Keaton in da]

This has to be BS. There are very lareg corporations with financials much more complex than Gates' taxes.
This sounds ridiculous. Do Warren Buffet's taxes need the special computer also?

Re:I don't buy it

[briancarnell]

Yes but large corporations don't have the sort of long-running mismanagement of IT that the IRS has. The story here isn't that Gates' fortune is so large but rather -- assuming the story isn't a hoax -- that the IRS is so mismanaged that it cannot deal with exceptional cases like Gates.

The IRS is apparently still using a computer system that became operational in 1967 (see this announcement for example).

Re:I don't buy it

[Anonymous Coward]

"There are very lareg corporations with financials much more complex than Gates' taxes."

Yes, but corporate taxes are probably held by a different division than personal taxes.

I worked for a year at the IRS in the early 90s and things are BAD. I wouldn't be surprised if he had to have his personal stuff moved over to the corporate computers.

Think about it this way, if you are running on older databases on older computers -- you have specific field sizes. Its hard to retroactively recode these without possible killing a large number of other items (I worked on modernizing some code at my department -- it was a pain in the ass). And beyond that, just because 0.00001% of the population needs a field size of a few hundred digits to calculate a value -- this will mean EVERYONE gets the same value size and require the same sorts of calculations slowing down the whole process and requiring a lot more memory (on computers that are no longer manufactured or were custom pieces -- because when I worked there, it was the battle of the lowest bidder and they ALWAYS made sure that just because they were lowest, it didn't mean they didn't make up for this fact a few years down the road with purposely propriatary parts they never told anyone about even though it was against the original spec sheet).

So I wouldn't be surprised to know a few dozen billionaires had their own computer system and were managed by a single individual (where as a single individual might manage a few million from a data perspective otherwise). And when you think about it, as much taxable income that man is bringing into the gov't -- it makes PERFECT sense that they'd put a $30k employee on to manage one guy that is chipping in a hundred million a year in taxes...

I could say more, but I won't because I still have security clearance with the IRS...at the same time, I'm going to post this anonymously even though I didn't give out any information that was secret (or even all that interesting).

Re:I don't buy it

[Rude Turnip]

This story is 100% plausible.

Bill didn't say that his tax records were the *only* one on that special computer. It is very likely that Mr. Buffet's records are on that computer too, as well as the records for any high net worth individual with complicated tax situations. I completely buy the story. I work in estate and gift tax planning and at least from that perspective, there are myriad of complicated structures (ie LLCs, FLPs, trusts, promissory notes) that require incredibly intense accounting. And I'm not even exposed to the more esoteric tax issues.

I did some work for a billionaire with only a *fraction* of Bill Gates' fortune once and I had to invent a whole new set of models for keeping track of the spider web of entities. The guy's accountants had it even worse, because they had to keep track of transactions in hundreds of entities by and among various family members...I just had to track the data for one individual. It was my understanding that if this particular family ever underwent a Section 754 Election, where the cost basis of the underlying assets is adjusted to market value (or something like that), the cost in legal, accounting and IT resources could run into the millions.

Re:At last, I have something in common with Bill..

[operagost]

They do mine on a napkin with a red pen.

Oblig. Simpsons Reference

[bigtallmofo]

Moe: "Say, Barn. Uh, remember when I said I'd have to send away to NASA to calculate your bar tab?"

Barney: "Oh ho, oh yeah. We all had a good laugh, Moe."

Moe: "The results came back today."

One of the MS Money Editions might suffice

[Anonymous Coward]

MS Money.
MS Money Small Business Edition.
MS Money Enterprise.
MS Money Multi-national Edition.
MS Money Dr. Evil Edition.
MS Money Dr. Evil Edition with Laser Beams.

A joke?

[goodben]

Anyone else consider that Bill was attempting a joke, but the interviewer couldn't tell? I mean only nerds get nerd humor, right?

They still can't calculate my taxes.

[slashbob22]

and never will, unless they can effectively divide by 0.

In other news, Steve Balmer threw a chair at the IRS computer so he could also claim they needed a new "special" one for him too.

Reminds me of..

[MaGogue]

Ah well this reminds me of the story that claimed that a Cray computer has been used to design the new Apple Mac (I don't remember which one).

When Seymour Cray was told this he supposedly replied with "That's funny, because I'm using an Apple computer to design(the Cray supercomputers)".

He's not Chuck Norris, because...

[mcho]

...when Chuck Norris sends in his taxes, he sends blank forms and includes only a picture of himself, crouched and ready to attack. Chuck Norris has not had to pay taxes, ever.

Re:At last, I have something in common with Bill..

[TedCheshireAcad]

Mr. Simpson, this computer can process NINE tax returns per DAY. Did you really think you could fool it?

Re:At last, I have something in common with Bill..

[lbmouse]

You must be raking in the dough.
They send mine to this fellow.