Worried about the way big companies are dodging federal taxes by incorporating in Bermuda? How about Delaware as a tax haven for a lot of companies to dodge state taxes?

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Toys R Us, for example, avoids many state taxes by paying millions of dollars in “licensing fees” to a Delaware subsidiary called Geoffrey Inc. for the right to use the Toys R Us name on signs outside stores. And Home Depot stores pay royalties to a Delaware-based holding company called Homer TLC Inc., a subsidiary of The Home Depot Inc. Millions of dollars thus flow into these Delaware offices without paying a penny in state taxes.

Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm that started Enron on its disastrous course, has been offering to set up the Delaware tax-avoidance corporations at $100,000 a pop. Other law and accounting firms have joined the scheme. Kmart has been following a PriceWaterhouse plan titled “Utilization of an Investment Holding Company to Minimize State and Local Income Taxes” and in 1995 alone funneled $317.5 million out of various states into a trademark holding company subsidiary in Michigan, another tax haven, according to the Journal.

State authorities now are fighting back. The Journal listed Toys R Us, The Home Depot, Kmart, Gap, Sherwin-Williams, Tyson Foods, Circuit City Stores, Stanley Works, Staples, Radio Shack and Burger King among 50 firms targeted in state tax proceedings. State courts differ on the legality of this tax-avoidance system, and some specialists hope the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually settle the question.

But wait a minute. Most of these companies avoiding state taxes do business in Maine. What is Maine doing about it? Nothing at all, it turns out, and the reason is that Maine is one of a handful of states that have immunized themselves against this holding-company strategy. Maine and a few other states tax companies on a “unitary” basis, combining all of a company’s operations for tax purposes rather than going after its in-state subsidiaries or the Delaware holding company. Maine taxes its share of the total income of a corporation and any subsidiaries.

Maine is the only New England state to deal with the holding-company strategy by adopting the unitary system, says Dennis Doiron, director of the income/estate tax division of Maine Revenue Services. On this issue, he says. “Maine is ahead of the curve,” he says.