Business execs must have more powerful contact lenses than the rest of us.

Here, I've been scanning income tax forms for years, looking in vain for the box marked "no thanks." Must be seriously fine print, because some businesses have been checking that box in Wisconsin for years.

A report released last week by a group calling itself the Institute for Wisconsin's Future states two out of every three companies doing business here paid no state income taxes in 2005. Some, like Racine's own Twin Disc, said they legitimately owed nothing while still smarting from previous losses. But zilch from two-thirds of the state?

"Some companies pay taxes, others do not. What distinguishes Coca-Cola, which pays, from PepsiCo, which doesn't? Presumably the difference is a matter of tax strategies," the authors wrote. "It makes no sense, however, to have a tax system in which individual companies are able to choose as a matter of internal strategy whether or not to pay taxes."

What buzz-kills these guys are. It makes perfect sense. The internal strategy in my household is not to pay, either.

Until now, though, I didn't know I had the option. Paying up beats a nasty-gram from an auditor.

Carrie Templeton, an executive assistant for the Department of Revenue, told me those auditors turned up $83.7 million that companies had shorted the state during the fiscal year that ended in 2006. She said the department reviews larger corporations every four years to see if an audit is needed.

Imagine the embarrassment in boardrooms. They could've avoided the mess by simply checking "no thanks" on the tax form, only they struggled just as much as I have to locate it.

Maybe you have to stare at the form from a certain angle in order to see the box. Or view it under a special kind of light. They wouldn't be called loopholes if they were easy to spot.

Following the footsteps of those who know the way to the secret box could help. The Institute's report identifies a few of the techniques companies have perfected over the years to brush off pesky Dairyland taxes.

One is leasing a logo to themselves for big bucks in another state, which Toys "R" Us perfected with Geoffrey the giraffe. Another is setting up a subsidiary in Nevada, which coincidentally has no corporate income tax.

The researchers see gloom: publicly owned firms operating too much in the dark, either shafting the public out of $643 million a year or forcing the little guy to make it up. The report never tackles the upside, how we worker bees can cash in on the zero-tax trend.

First, grab the snazziest looking family portrait you've got. Fly to some other state and hammer out a lucrative deal for the rights to it. Negotiate only with yourself, say, to lease it for use in Christmas cards.

Then hop a flight to Vegas and see if you can file the paperwork to establish a subsidiary of yourself. Don't worry, it won't count as cloning.

Unless legislators have booby-trapped those old pathways, you should then feel the same wave of invincibility some companies enjoy. The cheesehead tax man can only tip his cap and go off to haunt someone else.

While in Vegas, see if "no thanks" works for casino debts too. I hear they're just as flexible that way.

Mike Moore can be reached at (262) 631-1724 or

mike.moore@lee.net