Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the world’s
richest man, said today the tax office in the US has to store his
financial data on a special computer because his fortune is so vast.

"My tax return in the United States has to be kept on a special
computer because their normal computers can’t deal with the numbers,"
he said at a Microsoft conference held in Lisbon.

"So I am constantly getting these notices telling me I haven’t paid
something when really it is just on the wrong computer," he added in
comments broadcast on television.

"Then they will send me another notice telling me how bad they feel they that they sent me a notice that was a mistake," he said

Gates’s fortune is put at $US47 billion ($62.88 billion),
according to the latest list of the world’s rich published by Forbes
magazine.

Last month Time magazine named Gates and his wife
Melinda, along with rock star Bono, its Persons of the Year for 2005,
citing their charitable work and activism aimed at reducing global
poverty and improving world health.

The couple’s Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
has a $US29 billion ($38.8 billion) endowment making it the world’s
biggest charity.

More here.