UK Government to Tax Linux?

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."

Comments

OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Worst April Fool's article ever

Re:OMG

[Total_Wimp]

So, are all of the articles today April Fools jokes or are some of them real?

I'm just picturing an out-of-work programer named B0b getting taxed for developing open source missles and then needing to get free food to survive and keep programing. B0b's a tough, dedicated bastard.

TW

Even a 100% tax is ok

[AtariAmarok]

What is 100% of "free"?

Re:Even a 100% tax is ok

[bheer]

I know this is a joke, but in a way the UK (any .gov, really) bills open source already. Folk who install/deploy/sell Linux solutions pay Value Added Tax on the services they render. The only reason open source volunteers are -- and will remain -- exempt is that they don't enter into transactions with the organizations they're volunteering code to. You can't tax volunteer activity.

Re:Even a 100% tax is ok

[M.C. Hampster]

Actually, the reason they can't use the VAT on open source work is that usually, there is no value-added.

Yeah, I got karma to burn.

Re:Even a 100% tax is ok

[Gadzinka]

No, it isn't.

There was an attempt in Poland to tax linux this way. The thinking behind it was that if it is a gift for a commercial entity, than said entity has to pay Donation and Inheritance tax for it. And the base for this tax wouldn't be the price paid (zero). As it is with all donations, the base for the purpose of taxation is normal market price. Polish Revenue Service wanted it to be price of MS Office for OOo and price of Win NT/2k for Linux system.

Now, this news we are writing about is April 1st, but the history with trying to tax Linux, Open Office etc in Poland was true. Luckily it failed, although Finance Ministry didn't issue official statement or act about it in order to not tie hands of some enterprising clerks in revenue service.

Unfortunatelly I cannot find anything about it in English. If you know Polish google for site:linuxnews.pl podatek

Robert

Re:Even a 100% tax is ok

[ajs318]

VAT is sales tax and is chargeable on anything not considered "essential". The definition is somewhat subjective. VAT is not, for instance, charged on children's clothes {though it is charged on adults' clothes} nor on basic foodstuffs for preparation at home {but it is charged on take-away food}. Newspapers, magazines and books are not subject to VAT either.

That sucks

[NanoGator]

At least with the Microsoft tax, I get a neat holographic coaster.

tax it all you want...

[Hooya]

a 100% sales tax on $0 = $0. sheesh.

Re:tax it all you want...

[Sesostris III]

Er, no. It is 100% tax on $699 surely?

I make that ... $699!

Re:tax it all you want...

[zakezuke]

a 100% sales tax on $0 = $0. sheesh.

I wanted to give my niece my old car. The car was a piece of junk, but it was a running piece of junk. If I were to "give" her the car, then the state would charge her tax on what it estimates it's value to be, which I'm told was between $750-$1500... basicly base price for a running car. Tax in her region would have been 8.5% if i'm not mistaken... plus misc fees and such. Fair and reasonable, but still a $63.75 fee + misc other fees involved in the transfer of a car and yearly taxes.

Even selling it to her for $1.00 the state would be skeptical as to whether this was an honest deal, or a trick to avoid paying sales tax. I had to sign an statement of the car's value. Which was fine by me.. I signed a statement saying "it's had accidents, it has over 350,000 miles on it, family $1.00, non family $100.00".

The point is you can tax things with no value, or little value. It could be a flat non percent tax, or a tax of what the goverment believes the value should be.

Thank God!

[Knight Thrasher]

Real news on April 1st! Thank you! And please dear LORD no Open Source Tax!

Re:Thank God!

[Anonymous Coward]

Real news on April 1st! ...to make up for the bullshit we get on the other 364 days.

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

So, a tax on my free time is it?

What next? Sexual Enjoyment Tax??

Re:Great

[bigHairyDog]

What next? Sexual Enjoyment Tax??

No, I think most /.ers would be immune from that one...

Bernie :o)

Re:Great

[Phekko]

What, in Britain? Don't be daft, nobody enjoys it there ;)

Re:Great

[stephenisu]

actually they call it a repetitive stress injury.. or carpal tunnel.

Re:Great

[gellenburg]

Yes.

It would be called the Sexual Enjoyment Tax Initiative.

We will be releasing a distributed client to assist in this endeavour called "SETI@Home".

Have a good day.

Re:Great

[Mateito]

> What next? Sexual Enjoyment Tax??

You're not married, are you?
Some of us already pay that.

(You insensitive clod!)

Re:Great

[w42w42]

Already done. It's called child.

Very cute.

[Jaywalk]

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.

Re:Very cute.

[Draoi]

It looks like they bought the Google mail story hook, line and sinker.

Actually, it's true

And hey look, Slashdot got a mention;

"It's going to go down in history as one of the biggest pranks ever pulled," wrote one message poster at Slashdot.org, which bills itself as a news provider for nerds.

California already collects tax on Linux

[Texas Rose on Lava L]

The 8% sales tax comes to $55.92 per Linux installation.

eDrugTrader disagrees

[Deraj DeZine]

If you like shiny plastic and psychedelic colors, I would say that your money might have been better spent on hallucinogenic drugs.

If it only was a joke

[pdan]

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.

Re:OK, I'm bored

[NanoGator]

"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.

Re:OK, I'm bored

[chef_raekwon]

of the April fools jokes... 5 in one day is excessive.

you think that is excessive - maybe you should try working instead of trolling on slashdot. now that, is excessive, my friend.

The Brits Would Tax Your TV If They Could...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

The Brits Would Tax Your TV If They Could...oh wait...

Re:The Brits Would Tax Your TV If They Could...

[radish]

Funny that. I recently moved to NYC from London, and although there's no TV License here, I have a whole bunch of weird surcharges and taxes on my cable bill (other than regular sales tax). These add up to considerably more than my TV License used to cost in the UK. So I pay more, and get much worse TV for it. Oh well.

thingy!

[stevenrieder]

Obligatory Monty Python sketch:

Third Official: "Well most things we do for pleasure nowadays are taxed, except one."
Politician: "What do you mean?"
Third Official: "Well, er, smoking's been taxed, drinking's been taxed but not ... thingy."
Politician: "Good Lord, you're not suggesting we should tax... thingy?"
First Official: "Poo poo's?"
Third Official: "No."
First Official: "Thank God for that. Excuse me for a moment." (leaves)
Third Official: "No, no, no - thingy."
Second Official: "Number ones?"
Third Official: "No, thingy."
Politician: "Thingy!"
Second Official: "Ah, thingy. Well it'll certainly make chartered accountancy a much more interesting job."

What?

[vwjeff]

Another April Fools article. We all know that Linux is not real. You can't tax something that does not exist. Grow up people.

Great day for bad news

[rjelks]

This is a little offtopic like many of the posts today. What better day to release a bomb on the tech community. If I were in charge of PR for a government agency or large company, I'd use April 1st to announce bad news. No one would believe it. Not that I think the UK is going to tax linux, but I wonder if anyone is sneaking in potentially bad news today in the hopes that it will be ignored as a joke.

-

Time to tax IE and all of the other free software.

[westfirst]

Microsoft "gives away" IE. Sounds like a taxable item to me. And they give away plenty of other pieces of software for various reasons. Salesforces everywhere are known for claiming that someone is getting thousands of dollars of freebees, if they only purchase this minute. Gads, I think proprietary software companies "give away" more software than open source groups.

This just in...

[GPLDAN]

The UK has decided to Tax performances of Shakespeare in the park. "Giving away performances of Hamlet lowers the box office revenues of England's finest theaters", Tony Blair was heard to say. "It's got to stop, this giving things away. It's anti-Ameri... uh, it's not becoming of the nation."

Elsewhere, the Queen Mum was heard to exclaim, "Taxation, taxation, taxation! My forefathers believed in it, and look what happened to them!"

Poland's Free Software Tax Proposal [in English]

[Compact Dick]

Here's an English edition of the story: Poland: It's official! Tax for Free Software [2000-11-20].