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UK Government to Tax Linux?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The UK government is looking at introducing a tax aimed at software published under GNU GPL. It claims that because programmers do it for free, it is losing out on income tax and that commercial software companies (read Microsoft) are at a disadvantage. Some pressure group has already put up a website with more details and news site Techworld have got a quote from a Treasury spokesman saying that they're only considering it."

3 of 343 comments (clear)

  1. Very cute. by Jaywalk · · Score: 4, Interesting
    And the "what you can do" plea to get readers to get major news organizations to pick up the story is a nice touch. Nice example of viral marketing. It would be a bit more convincing -- but less funny -- if they got people to write Parliament instead.

    I'd dearly love to see Forbes get suckered by this one. They've been such dorks about anything to do with Linux, it would be par for the course. It looks like they bought the Google mail story hook, line and sinker.

    --
    ===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
  2. If it only was a joke by pdan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In my country (Poland) a few years ago they decided that they should put VAT (value added tax) on free software. They found some law that enables tax officials to reassess value of goods if they seem underpriced. They assumed value of a Linux distro to be a price (not value of course) of Windows Server and for Open Office of MS Office Pro.
    Fortunately all media ridiculed this idea and they backed off.

  3. Re:OK, I'm bored by NanoGator · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "OK, I'm bored of the April fools jokes... 5 in one day is excessive."

    Every single April 1st, there's always some git who gets modded up for saying the exact same thing. Slashdot's been running 365/24/7, you can can take a day off for silliness.

    --
    "Derp de derp."