I'm assuming your analogy is casting taxation as a "cost of doing business." Of course, in a bookkeeping sense, it is certainly seen as such by realistic corporations, much as piracy used to be factored into the cost of merchant shipping in another age.

The gaping hole in your analogy is that in any productive business or endeavor, the REAL costs of doing business are items that actually increase productivity, or make productivity possible. In your casino analogy, these are indeed things like "cards, dealer, casino, tips, security guards, etc." (assuming for the sake of the analogy that the gambler is required to pay for such things up front, as opposed to being taken from the percentage, as in real life) Casino gambling would not be possible without these things. Similar real costs of doing business for Gates would be facilities, researchers, computers, staff, support equipment, and other such things.

Taxes do not fall into this category.

Taxes do absolutely nothing to help Bill Gates do his job. They don't create software, run buildings, pay employees, or do anything to create wealth. They, like the pirates with the merchantmen, contribute nothing and simply take wealth away from the real productive uses it would otherwise be put to. The summation of this crippling effect on productivity, spread through every industry in America, can only be imagined.

Your immediate response would probably be that Bill Gates gets for his taxes roads, defense, and other sundry government items. Okay, but to be fair, he personally gets little or no bigger percentage of these government goodies than Joe Sixpack does. Why then, should he pay thousands of times the taxes of Joe Sixpack, except to worship at the altar of socialist income redistribution?

Just as an aside, I would agree with you that it's a dang sight better to get ten million dollars and pay half of it in taxes, than to get $20,000 and pay no tax at all. I dare say that Bill Gates and most millionaires have this comforting philosophy, which may go a long way toward explaining why there are a lot fewer rabid millionaire libertarians grousing about taxes than you think there would be.