The Republican tax bill being negotiated this week is like a Sudoku puzzle: daunting to novices, but in the hands of an experienced master, a simple case of plugging in numbers. The opportunities for gaming the new rules will make tax lawyers unspeakably rich for the rest of time, finding endless opportunities to shelter, transform, or reassign income to lower their clients’ payments. And there’s another group poised to get in on the tax loophole fun: state governments that, in a few simple steps, can and probably will nullify the biggest sources of revenue in the bill.

All of this fits with a longstanding conservative project: Starve the government of taxes, and use that as a rationale to slash social spending. This would achieve their goal of re-channeling government benefits from the working poor, who require safety net assistance, to oligarchic holders of dynastic wealth. Considered in this light, one wonders whether the hastily drafted, loophole-ridden tax plan was purposely built as a leaky boat.

In a research paper published last week, “The Games They Will Play: Tax Games, Roadblocks, and Glitches Under the New Legislation,” 13 tax scholars explained how wealthy Americans can work the tax bill for further advantage. Because the business tax rate, both for corporations and “pass-through” businesses (like neighborhood stores or partnerships), would be so much lower than the income tax rate, it gives people incentives to essentially become businesses. “To achieve the tax savings, no longer be an employee,” the paper’s authors wrote, “instead be an owner.”

For example, people could push their salaries through corporations they set up, or invest through them, sheltering earnings in a low-tax vehicle. It’s mainly a strategy for the rich, since the poor need their salaries to—well, live on. This can work with pass-throughs as well; an employee taking salary from a company will take home less than an independent contractor. There are supposed to be restrictions on “service providers” in law firms or financial companies from pass-through benefits, but they are easily evaded. Lawyers working for a firm can characterize themselves as “associates” in a pass-through business that the firm contracts for services. Associates in the pass-through can then take up to $500,000 in earnings at the lower rate.

The sneaky side benefit for corporations here is that they don’t have to provide benefits to an independent contractor, like they do a salaried employee. The tax bill forces everyone onto solitary islands for the purposes of tax strategy, but paid time off, holidays, sick days, and even health benefits could get lost in the exchange. This relieves corporations, which already get their tax rate reduced from 35 percent to 20 percent, from having to pay those benefit costs.