The Versatile Master Artist

”Brother Gu, I knew your family was wealthy, but I didn’t expect you to be so rich that you needed to set up a charity foundation to avoid taxes.”

Looking at the words ”charity foundation” on paper, Uncle Ah Lai was very surprised.

Southeast Asia is not like more procedural developed countries governed by laws.

Here, the ways rich people evade taxes are actually quite crude, often involving bribing government officials to directly evade taxes.

In the chaotic regions to the north and east, most of the large enterprises or mining companies are almost entirely controlled by private warlord families.

Talking about paying taxes is simply a complete joke.

It’s generally only the international big bosses, like Chen Shenglin at this Level, who will establish their own private charitable foundations and the like.

The doorkeeper’s words didn’t really carry any kind of sarcastic tone.

No matter how many benefits people want to gain from the charity foundation, at least what Uncle Ah Lai could see was that the donations this high school student gave to the orphanage were real money.

The changes brought about were tangible, and that was enough.

The children in the orphanage and the female director all regarded him as a little Bodhisattva.

This was much better than the small bosses Uncle Ah Lai had seen over the years, who dumped unsellable junk from their factories onto the orphanage to cheat government subsidies.

”It’s not my parents’ money. Our family are just ordinary people running a small gallery in Yangon. All of this money was earned from selling my own paintings. The funds for the renovation of the orphanage come from this. I plan to donate at least ten thousand dollars to the foundation’s account every month in the future.”

The Little Prince project team had already notified Gu Weijing about the successful bid and the new contract.

Excluding the peripheral illustration collection, the final contract secured by Mr. Tree Sloth from the Scholastic Group included a 7.2% share of the gross sales profits.

The publisher was likely aiming for long-term cooperation with Lady Detective Cat.

A 7.2% share doesn’t even sound like a tenth, but it was actually quite generous, nearly double the industry’s standard 4% share for illustrators.

Not counting the operating costs of physical stores, books are an industry with an especially exaggerated gross profit margin.

In simple terms, for every copy of The Little Prince sold, Gu Weijing’s account would see an increase of a few pounds.

As long as several thousand books could sell each month, Gu Weijing’s account would steadily increase by over ten thousand dollars, and for each day The Little Prince was sold, he would earn daily revenue.

It’s almost like a foolproof investment.

The former flagship author of the Scholastic Group, J.K. Rowling, published the last Harry Potter book almost 20 years ago.

The revenue from annual series sales still amounted to astronomical figures, surpassing the annual earnings of the entire British Royal Family.

A best-selling author, unmarried, is almost the classic image of the elite, elegant, diamond bachelor in modern UK and US urban romance dramas, more popular than even busy big-shot lawyers or corporate elites.

Compared to the prime super best-selling authors at the Scholastic Group, whose signing fees start at five or even ten million dollars just for a book, the compensation given to Gu Weijing by the publisher is hardly worth mentioning.

What Gu Weijing stated here casually shocked Uncle Ah Lai, his jaw almost dropping.

Ten thousand dollars a month is one hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year.

Converted to the most commonly used local currency denomination of a hundred Myanmar Kyat, that’s several million, enough to stack up like the sea in the main hall of the orphanage.

This income, even in the San Francisco Bay Area, would already be on par with elite programmers’ salaries.

In Yangon, a low-cost, third-world city, it could barely qualify as being part of the wealthy.

The doorkeeper had seen big money before, but how could someone so young earn so much?

”Selling paintings?”

”Not counterfeiting, not deceiving, just selling my own paintings; there couldn’t be clearer money than that, right?” Gu Weijing didn’t explain much further, instead gazing at Uncle Ah Lai with a few suspicious looks in his eyes. ”You don’t believe me, do you?”

”If it were someone else, I wouldn’t believe it no matter what.”

Uncle Ah Lai remained silent for a long time, his gaze lingering for a long while on the pen sketch on the table before he looked up and stared directly at Gu Weijing, pressing his lips together.

”I’ve seen this pen drawing, and after Boss Chen’s previous incidents, I’m willing to believe half. That, along with the consistently good impression you’ve left on me, makes me willing to believe eighty percent.”

”So much uncompensated donation? Is it really purely out of a desire to do good?”

He furrowed his brows, wanting to see beneath the young facade whether there was a complete fool or if there truly were people in this world who could be considered a Holy Mother reincarnate, with such a compassionate heart.

”I’m a very pure person. Being able to change the lives of the kids here makes me very happy and gives me a sense of fulfillment. It’s the most meaningful way of spending money I can think of.”

Gu Weijing gestured for Uncle Ah Lai to look at the draft articles of the ”Jasmine” foundation.

”You see, it stipulates that all of the account funds currently are to be 100% used for the life, schooling, and medical provisions of drug-afflicted orphans.”

The legal regulations for setting up private charitable foundations vary from country to country, but their nature is quite similar.

Besides requiring legal registration, foundation articles need to be set up to stipulate the expenditure and purposes of the account funds and make them public.

Much like tax avoidance, foundation articles are also a prime area where the rich exploit legal loopholes.