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Indian ISPs Taxed for Generating "Light Energy"
CaptKeen writes, "The Hindu is reporting that the Indian Government is trying to tax optical broadband providers (think fiber to the premises) for generating 'light energy.' According to the Commercial Tax Department, optical broadband providers operate on light energy which is 'artificially created and sold to customers for the purpose of data transmission and information.' This classification would make Internet access goods (since you are buying light) as opposed to service — and would be subject to a 12.5% VAT."
it's gotta be a cheaper tax than that *heavy* energy...
That will be billed per photon then?
Karma: -2147483648 (Mostly affected by integer overflow)
This sounds reasonable and ingenious.
Government. - thats the joke, nothing else needed.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
... I've got some electrons to sell you. Cheap! Interested?
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
That will solve the deficit problem
...I generate "wind energy" several times a day, but I don't ask the Government to pay for it, do I.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
After all ... "let there be light".
The Raven
as I understand that 10/10 is the equivalent for them.
It's like the US government reclassifying tomato as a vegetable so it can impose the import tarif on it. Governments always look for ways how to tax the hell out of you. Nothing new here. Move along.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Let's put them all on a shuttle and send to them collect billions of years of back taxes from the sun.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
Did Senator Stevens move to India or something? Internet access is definitely a service. When you buy FTTP, it's definitely NOT for the light that goes through the wires. You're buying it for the data that the light transmits. You're buying it for the access to the internet. Most people won't even care how that data gets to their PC.
Well, since it is both an upstream and downstream link, you just send their light back to them and get your money back. Sort of like the deposit some places have on glass bottles. You're just "borrowing" the light, which can then be recycled.
Can anyone in India tell me whether this is an honest attempt at doing something stupid, or do you guys have the equivalent of Ted Stevens and his "Internet Tubes"?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
if they are serious, then it's time to calculate how much elecrical energy cost it takes to generate the light (almost nothing I'm sure) they can then tax that if they want--- not worth chasing ~5 cents of power per connection per year if you ask me.
Do people get to keep the light they pay for then?
I'm sure that cost will not be passed on to customers nor will it reduce the adoption of e-commerce and broadband in the country...
I used to work for a logistics company, and we dealt with 'light goods' all the time.
Oh.
We don't even get fiber to premises in Bay Area.
When the British empire controlled India, they levied a small tax on the production of all salt in the country. It was not that the government made much by this tax, nor was it that the people were burdened by it. But india ran on salt, and by taxing it the British controlled it. It was for this reason that Gandhi lead a march to the sea to do the very simple thing of making salt in oppisition to british rule.
When I read that a government that was created by the power and witness of such acts now wished to tax the production and transmission of light, It makes me wonder if they have even read their history.
JFMILLER
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
This seems to have to do with their culture.
Years ago, a rally driver and his navigator died in a very nasty crash... head on collision with another car.
Why?
Because it was during the night, and Indian (from India people) drivers turn off their headlight because - get this - it saves fuel.
Indian ISPs, come on down! You've been selected to compete in "The Price Is Light"!
Starkle, starkle, little twink.
The local CTO (Commercial Tax Officer) will see the light and revoke the tax once these private ISPs pool enough money together and visit him in his home and offer a little maamool ;-)
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm curious as to whether or not this isn't an attempt by the Indian government to try and help re-distribute the wealth to a degree. My understanding is that there is a growing urban/rural conflict emerging as the elites in the major urban areas are growing wealther and wealthier due to outsourcing by wealthier nations to India and the rural areas continue to be rather impoverished. So the net impact on the populace is only going to be really hitting the urban areas and the new tax revenue could be used through-out the country. Not saying I like the idea of this tax, I'm just speculating on what could be the root idea behind it.
Shocked, I tell ya. Goverments will tax! Unbelievable!
In related news, it's been proved that men are mortal, but behave as if they weren't.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
We are looking to find an algorythm which can compress data into as many 0's as possible. /dev/null and whilst this has the desired effect, we cannot rebuild the data at the other end.
We will pay handsomly for such an algorythm since our light bill will be substantially lowered.
Note, we have already tried piping the data through
In this case, the lights are off but we are home.
Incidentally, our engineers did try to come up with a novel way to transmit binary data using darkness alone.
We transmitted a zero as a single off state, and a one as a double off state, this saves electricity and light but our engineers are again having trouble reading it.
liqbase
Instead of a 12.5% VAT, shouldn't it be only 6.25% since it's "light" energy?
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
I thought the Indians would be satisfied when we allowed them to operate casinos on their reservations.
Now they're trying to tax light? The Indians are usually much more in tune with nature than this.
Nevermind that the photons don't go past the first repeater. Was anyone else reminded of when California tried to apply annual property taxes on satellites in orbit?
Sometimes the principal that I hold so dear, that lawyers are the worst of all humans is tested by a group of legislators.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Since sporting events got taxed at nearly 3 times the rate of entertainment venues, the promoters quickly admitted to "Pro Wrestling is fake!
"Reporting a turnover and then claiming exemption is one thing. But some of the OFC operators don't even report their turnovers," Mr. Chitaguppi alleged.
/.?
I'm sorry, is this
Today, it seems more like fark.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Oh Man ! what next are they going to do they try blocking blogs websites and now they are taxing for light :0
India must be a difficult place for ISP's to do business
for the creation of Wind Energy.
. . . . . of this government's incompetent bungling . We have probably the best educated prime minister in the whole world , but thanks to political considerations ( a coalition of a centrist party and the communist party is ruling at the centre currently ) , he is not enjoying the freedom to enact reforms he deserves . He is the guy who started the reforms process in the first place , and brought India's economy into the modern world in 1991 .
.
Then there was the internet censorship scandal - the censorship continues till this day . Then there was the retarded idea to introduce fixed quotas for the Other Backward Castes in educational institutions - this means that only a OBC people can fill 25 % of seats in educational institutions - even private ones ! - even if they are unqualified , and if a sufficient number of them do not apply , then that seat remains vacant . Then there was the media censorship issue - there was a plan , thankfully scuttled , to ban The Da Vinci Code ( the movie ) because it "offended Christian sentiments in India" . And , of course , we have their lacklustre management of the economic scenario ( what else can you expect when the Communists threaten to withdraw support ( and thus make the government fall ) every time somebody tries to implement some reform ? )
I'm very definitely not voting for this lot . I was too young to vote in the last election , but in the next one , this bunch is definitely OUT .
One way around it-- they could switch to infrared LED's, then you're not getting visible light.
If they claim you're still getting heat, challenge them to feel the end of the fiber and detect any heat coming out.
It does make Ben Franklin, or was it Faraday, apropos to today. Back then he was showing some govt official batteries and electromagnets. The official asked "What good is it?" Reply: "Soemday, you'll tax it".
As they send light back!
I wish you 100% success in your initiative to tax light energy from Indian ISPs
You will single handedly kill outsourcing to your country. Many American IT workers will deliver many thanks upon you
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
taxing created light sounds like a great idea. we should put up tollbooths for all of those trucks driving around our tubes here in the US.
This is an example of the government using a blatent loophole to extract more taxes from people. When people use the same tricks to avoid being taxed it is called tax evasion and considered a crime.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Thank you. Come again!
-- QED
You are no more buying the light than you are buying the fiber optics, or the copper in traditional lines.
... until they tax anyone using sunlight to see?
8==8 Bones 8==8
This sounds reasonable and ingenious.
Insidious, maybe. But "Buying Light" suggests it's only unidirectional, what's really happening is you're exchanging light, with a net of 0.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
And if you OWN it, can't you Change it how you see fit? this might be the legal loophole hackers have been looking for!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Sold by weight, not volume.
-=[ place
Clearly the excitation of air molecules to vibrate in waves of energy transmitted to your ear from a phone should also be taxed.
What people don't comprehend is who the goverment is authorized to collect from. A foreign state can already collect the tax, whereas another foreign state is hindered from collecting said tax for whatever governing has already been rendered. The people can't be taxed twice, because government is applied to reprove the security and efficiency of a process. A government that collects a tax and renders no improvement, is not government; it lays down its sovereignty and becomes that of a private citizen, able to sue and be sued, own property and compete with fellow offers of the common good.
Going to the books, it would be trivial to find the loophole if the information is considered to be "the light" emit through the fiber-optic lines. The company could just as easily switch that the dark is the binary-closed/1 and the light is the binary-open/0. Then they could just as well reason on whether the information is derived or carries its Endian order of data, just for bringing the intellectual-property of a State through the process to prevent anyone from trying to attach any government to intellectual property that has already been governed. Wherever there is benefit, there is a right for a Body to govern that benefit. Given that most mail matter is tainted with commercial suggestions from worldly intellectual-property organized by trustees in a corporation known as WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ORGANIZATION, it would seem that most governing is a suggestion enticed by the presumption to attain said services by not Refusing For Cause an Invitation or Offer from said foreign state.
Surely, everyone on Slashdot knows how to fill their Bench and move the Court; without politic, it's mindless limited liability offers from a corporation.
without prejudice
The tax department should rebate a percentage of the tax they collect for the value of the paper on which the paid taxes are printed.
--
make install -not war
You may not get the behavior your desired but you always get the behavior you incent.
What unforeseen behavior will this tax create to avoid it?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The fiberoptic light energy is a *free* service, available to anyone without charge.
However, if you would like the ISP to modulate some well-timed *dark* spots in the line for the purposes of data transmission, *that* is going to cost you.
Since darkness (the absence of light) can't be defined as a product, no VAT.
Problem solved.
Robot Jox
I'd pay sales tax on photons if it meant I really owned them. Then anybody who tried to restrict what I could do with them could go piss up a rope.
(Unless the Oppressors found a way to say that the photons are yours, but once you convert them back into bits, all their restrictions applied again.
Which they probably would.
btw, is the revolution any closer yet?)
-- http://frobnosticate.com
No, they can't do that. Laws of physics do not permit any charge for photons.
This ain't for the masses either; as photon has zero mass. I think they try to put a whole new spin to it.
Isn't the consumer sending light back during communication? They're really stretching for something to tax here.
This is utterly stupid, blockheaded, yep. D-Dumb! But if they want to have their cake... then surely one would have to offset the light received for the light return from the user to the ISPs. And I think we need to call some experts on PPPoE protocol but does a higher downstream actually have to do with more light coming thisaway than thataway? And it's not a lot of light to be sure, that's very expensive light. Could users not shine some light back? Can users get a tax break if they do a lot of uploading? Someone has got to help these guys. With any luck it will begin to resemble trying to measure the length of a shoreline at progressively higher resolutions.
How long until they hire Mr. Burns to built them a sun blocking device? Then they could charge a fee to allow the sun through, and finally be able to get the tax income from all those photons people have been mooching for free all these eons...
But please be aware that all verbal complaints are considered "sound energy" and will be taxed at
$10 per nano-decibel.
Thank you and have a nice day
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Obviously, power suppliers providing DC power would be selling a good, in that they deliver a series of electrical charges.
Those providing AC power would only be guilty of pushing and pulling at their own end to cause movement at the other end - i.e. a service.
Run for your life from the Monkey Man!
Isn't the electricity used to generate the light already taxed?
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Does having a really heavy rack in my datacenter mean that I'm slightly bending light, and thus modifying the "goods" in question? Does that mean that I'm also subject to a value-added tax of some sort? And if I look at my data through rose-colored glasses, then what... do some of the "goods" never get delivered? This is a lot to take in... but server virtualization is looking better every minute: fewer places for that light to actually go. Whew!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So do they only tax the difference between the amount of light that is sent and the amount received. If you're being taxed on it, it seems silly to give it right back...
Will users face the same power-generation taxes for sending packets back to the ISP?
In the unlikely event that this ruling passes muster with the Delhi High Court, it could also hasten India's already-rapid migration to wireless broadband.
-c.
Casey
More scratches on the cave wall, thanks be to anonymity.
I am an Indian and I have no idea what the government is trying to achieve by this. India already has a tax on services, at 12%. How would changing the classification from goods to service help ? The tax revenue will be increasing by just 0.5%.
In any case, this is being done only by a state government, so its valid only within that particular state. It will have no effect on any other parts of the country. And I expect this to be struck down by the courts anyway.
That was the sound of electromagnetism going over the heads of lawmakers worldwide.
I love it.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Someone should educate the Indian Income Tax department about the value of patents and how they can make even more money by licensing this idea to every tax department in the world.
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
How about Lawyers and their "Sound Energy"?
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
I hope the Indian government sees the light and drops this.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
In addition to the novel interpretation of communication signals as goods, there's this absurd claim that the telecommunication companies are commiting "tax evasion" by failing to comply retroactively with this peculiar interpretation of the tax law.
Do they tax the ISP customer too? I mean, they're generating light to communicate too. It's not all one way.
1 transmitter = 1mW
ISP has say approx. 200 lines = 0.2W
That will be $2 per year, please!
This shows how dumass our politicians are...But again majority of our Indian politicians are ex-criminals/racists/sick-folks and so this might be a smart idea in their world!
I thought they were filled with little illegally copied DVDs and CDs? What gives?
----- There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend; those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
...it would be more accurate to refer to it as "heat" since all fiber optic network devices pretty much operate at invisible infrared wavelengths.
Because, we know that the internets are not a truck and trucks have lights. This is really getting confusing. Congress, please send help!
PRESS RELEASE
NEW DELHI - 10 OCT 2006
A consortium of major Indian ISPs announced thier breakthrough new serivce, "Fiber to the almost premises."
For the same price as their old "Fiber to the premises" service-cum-product, they will run fiber to a box just outside your premisis. For an additional charge, they will run as many 10GHz copper ethernet cables as you want onto your premises.
This service, unlike their previous offerings, is not subject to VAT, greatly reducing customer cost.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Fruits have seeds in them.
:(){
Um, duh? They aren't creating energy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energ y
Apparently Indian politicians are dumber than those in the US. At least ours learned this in high school.
And this is where our jobs are going?
...and not get all racist here and make fun of another country (after all, our politicians still think of dump trucks and series of tubes). They know it sounds dumb, but the purpose was to levy a tax, and they achieved that goal.
Well, at least the Phlogiston prices have finally stabilized...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
I don't suppose that anyone over there thought to bring up that they are not "creating light energy", they are converting electrical energy (which is aparently free to use for transmitting data) to another form, sending it down a pipline and re-converting to electrical energy? Why is this any different than imposing a signal variation on an electrical line? And would someone please tell me when photons became available as a commodity?
Maybe he shouldn't have said "let there be light" ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Is electrical service subject to VAT in India?
The SCO lawsuit makes me wish my company were in Utah. We need a new building.
This is one of innumerable instances where the bureaucracy (or an unbelievably numb part of it) will reclassify something at a whim and want to tax it. The motives are many - revenue to the exchequer, corruption, or just plain sadism.
You've got to meet some of these revenue officials to realize what absolute crud they are actually.
It should be clear to anybody having the slightest knowledge of business transactions and indirect taxation that the ISPs are not selling light energy, they are just providing data communication service. If we go by their logic, they would start levying VAT on the electrical charge in phone lines, microwaves for cellphones, radio waves, God knows what else.
And as the value of the 'goods' being sold is much higher than the input cost, namely electricity, the value added could be computed as a major chunk of the rental/data transmission charges unless allowed to be set off by connectivity expenses.
Oh well, not everyone in India has to worry about this, the tax is being assessed only in Karnataka, where Bangalore - and its most notorious, useless products are located. In a sense, it is moving forward quicker to the planned unification of VAT and Service Tax under GST. More power to you, o techie!
-clueless
Chat with other atheists http://secularchat.org
haha, that was exactly my thought.... what unit will they use?
And if it's goods, how is it packaged? I would like my 1,000,000,000 photons to go please. With fries.
And what if you use a form of compression? Do you pay less, because you're getting fewer units of product?
And what if I sue, claiming I never received my photons? Can they prove I did? Can they prove they're missing any?
The whole idea of redefining things, e.g. internet service as delivery of photons, is clearly corrupt. But it's certainly not limited to India. For instance, Heather Wilson (R-NM) recently sponsored a bill that would redefine "electronic evesdropping" to exclude many forms of electronic eavesdropping, to allow the NSA to spy on Americans.
For downstream traffic, it sounds like a plan, but shouldn't they pay you back for the "light energy" you send when generate upstream traffic. You've already paid for that in your electric bill so a compensation is fair play. Actually, if you max out your upload limits with masses of torrents, you're probably sending more than receiving. Shouldn't _they_ be paying you?
How much do you think you are gonna pay? After all, your internet doesn't use little fiber optics but huge tubes instead!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Suck yourself, asshole.
Cows may be holy, but that doesn't prevent us from milking them.
Now, if you want to do the accounting properly, you should separate out the cost of the energy used in producing the light, as opposed to the cost of the information. So the wattage used to drive the transmission gear ought to be easy to measure, because that's the energy used to generate light. What percentage of the total electricity used by the ISP goes to the lasers, as opposed to the servers, routers, etc.? How much did they spend on electricity? How much is that as a percentage of the total price of the service?
If the stupid tax thugs want to cripple their economy through rent-seeking, make sure they only get the correct rent...
When I first started working with Indian businesses in the early 90s, my opinion was that the best thing anybody could do for the world economy was to ask their telecom regulation bureaucrats how much of a bribe it would take to get them to go away and leave everybody alone. A billion dollars? Pay it! Of course, nobody did that, but telecom did gradually get some partial liberalization, and the Bangalore call center business alone went from near-zero to a billion dollars, then two, then five billion a year, and I've lost track of its growth since then. There's still a lot of trouble - VSNL had a lock on the submarine cable landings, so there were terabits of traffic going by the harbor in Mumbai but only a few gigabits were allowed to land, and they were very expensive because of their scarcity and the toll they extracted for using the services, whereas other carriers can haul bandwidth around the country for costs (as opposed to prices) that resemble the costs in the EU or US. India may have economic development issues that make it a bit more expensive, but that's more like a factor of 2, not 10, and the cost of right-of-way for cable routes should probably be much lower, which makes up for some of it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
my fios internet "light" comes to a verizon owned box, outside of my house, and is then converted to good ol' tcp/ip "service" before it comes in to my PC.
There are countries with just a single rate of VAT for all goods and services. I live in one and must say it has definitely decreased tax fraud and consequently organized crime.
Besides, it seems more just to me. Who is to tell which good or service ought to be preferred by lower VAT rate?
Well, I'd really like to see arguments for the lowered rate for services.
So India will finally decide if a photon is a particle or a wave?
this is great! SCREW YOU EINSTEIN!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Maybe we should next tax people who talk in movie theaters for a sound tax. The create energy via sound waves.
So, by the mass-energy equivalence law, I can sell 1 liter of water, and be taxed for the equivalent of 9*10^16 joules?
I want to say "Haha, great joke, should've posted it on Aril 1," but this is a government we're talking about, so I'll believe anything is possible. I know most people in government have an above room-temperature IQ, so it never ceases to amaze me how such idiocy can be put forth by otherwise moderately intelligent people.
No wonder they are doing this in my country. The politicians have now set their eyes on one of the country's most lucrative sector and government officials have basically become puppets in their hands. A few months ago they wanted to put reservations (based on the caste) in IIT admissions and now this.1 205374,00.html/ , I just laught to myself. IT is only fueling the economic growth of few fortunate people (people who could afford computer education and are in the right age group of 20-35)along with corruption which is so rampant throughout the country IT is just making the economic gap between haves and have-nots much wider
when I read the articles such as these http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,
It didn't take a rocket scientist to see that once they got us in there and had a sizable investment that they would change the playing field.
Anywhere in the world, bureaucracies employ the same caliber of bureaucrats.
Alaska just called, they want their Ted Stevens back.
No, they don't.
In fact, can we get him on the No Fly List?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Senator Ted Stevens(R-AK) has been replaced by a similarly competent politician in India, for less than half the cost!
We should beging interviewing candidates to outsource the President next.
If this raises the cost of doing business significantly for those tech-sector jobs that have been outsourced to India, perhaps some of those jobs might come back to the US (or whatever other country they were outsourced from in the first place).
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
Do you know the joke about "how come they didn't come up with tax for air?"
It's pretty old as well. There's no reason for a government owning your ass to stop at such trivial obstacles such as common sense and morale. It just has to be legal.
Coincidentally, what is legal is decided by the government. Man, I so wanna be in the next elections, come to think of it!
Indians import all their light from US servers that produce this energy, and I therefore suggest the Indian government put a tariff or quota on this outrageous and unchecked commodity. You can't let everything just slide through those tubes and into Indian territory. Think of the childr.. never mind.
Indian ISPs are already charged service tax at 12.4% it doesn't make a difference if they charge VAT at 12.5% instead
-T
Isnt there a tax that can be levied on idiot bureucrats ?
Read radical news here
Really what happened is the company (Airtel) didn't bribe some politician or offended one in some manner (such as an employee of the company playing his music too loud next door, or the company CEO refusing to let the politicians layabout son marry his daughter or some such, or indeed because the politicians astrologer told him it would be beneficial if he put shani in the 4th house of Airtel...).
Clearly Airtel is in the deepest shit because Ahh the Chitaguppis of this world are getting upitty these days.
The problem will go away when either Airtel does bribe said politico or this goes to court for ten years and lawyers bicker back and forth using words that do not mean what they think they mean, and it dies a nice peaceful death. Or the politician does.
In the event that this is the tax department trying to be "creative", I'd points out that cellular providers, radio providers and indeed basically any device that has a counter (your speedometer for instance)that you look at uses photons to transmit data to your cellphone/radio/eye. Ofcourse just imagine the increase in revenue if they taxed all those devices. Or argue that light is energy and Airtel (might be) is paying for their energy and simply changing energy from one form to another is a perfectly dull thing to do and is all allowed by this lovely little principle called conservation of energy.
Also for your general light entertainment (hyuk hyuk) have a song.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Light is just a tiny part of the spectrum that is being used to carry data. What about digital radio, for example? Do they tax broadcasters of that, too?
' According to the Commercial Tax Department, optical broadband providers operate on light energy which is 'artificially created and sold to customers for the purpose of data transmission and information.'
Totally awesome! They're artificially creating light energy!
This should be struck down on technicalities alone.
Maybe they could use Goatses (amount of traffic generated to download a copy of the goatse image)?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
dont agitate the dots!
is the law of Conservation of Energy. You can't create energy. You can only convert it between forms. Hence no energy creation tax can ever be collected on.
So the copper wires don't need any energy then?
:p
Maybe they should use these dark fibres you hear about
It's a shame we can't get a tax credit for every bit of "stupid" that government generates, of course, if we did then the government wouldn't get any revenue.
Trouble with this law, US providers might see it and decide to start charging users for the light they "use".
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Since the closer you travel to the speed of light the slower in time everyone else goes who is not in a frame of acceleration relative to you. So if light is travelng at the ultimate speed, it goes to prove that there is only 1 photon that just happens to be everywhere at once since it effectivily has an infinite time to be an infinite number of places. So pay .01 cent to them for the 1 photon and be done with it.
I bet this probably is completely wrong, makes no sense, and is in fact the product of a deranged mind, but at least I know where my towel is.
When enough Indian interests get their fingers into the tech pie, the cost of India tech labor may not look so favorable anymore.
Table-ized A.I.
In India we already pay a service tax for internet connections and the rate is the smame, i.e. 12.25%. If the news about charging VAT instead of service tax is true (I doubt it) the debate is over which tax authority collects the revenue and not what the consumer pays. More like two revenue collection departments of the governmnet fighting amongst themselves.
Also VAT is decided by the state government and goes to its kitty, while servise tax is cllected by the federal (central) governmnet and then redistributed according to a pre approved formula with the various states.
It would be interesting to know though if traditional ISPs in Karnataka are subject to taxes that apply to the sale of electricity for example and whether fiber based ISPs are excempt from those taxes.
This opens the door for India to tax prana.
...I'll be damned if this a half step from how the Orthodox consider the act of turning on a slowly oxidizing light bulb filament equivalent to starting a fire.
Which is better? The one you do for fear of God, or the one you do for fear of not getting your country in Reuters' "Oddly Enough" section at least once a week?
Little addition: ... and tell the tax collection agency about it.
You know, they have a lot of work so if you do not notify them, they may accidentaly overlook this transaction thus the result of your experiment will be: nothing happens, except that someone being maybe happy thus not proving the point of "You obviously do not know how to think like a bureaucrat".
Another reason to do that is because (at least if you live in democratic country) those public servants are always honest with you so you should be too. :)
hany
The government becomes enlightened...
I tried 8(
If closed the mind be, so then the mouth should follow.
Discriminating against bosons with their Integer-spin VAT!
Here in the West, our members of government know that they first must own stock in or make friends in the weapons and oil biz, then start stupid wars which will give them a good reason to jack up oil prices and sell lots of bullets. --Direct theft of the public purse is not tolerated; it must be masked it under one or two layers of wool.
Of course, the people in the West would be too smart to fall for such cheep tricks if their brains had not first been fermented into head-cheese through the slow-cook process of being plugged more or less permanently into television sets, cell-phones, ipods and video-game boxes.
-FL
Why is noone taking this lightly?
Have you read my journal today?
Sorry Captain, you have to pay your "12.5% VAT" first.
What? Hezbollah emerged in Lebanon in the 80's. They had nothing to do with the "Iran Hostage Crisis".
And the Iran Hostage Crisis was hardly the result of a terrorist act. --It came about more through a mob reaction to American villainy. (The CIA regularly interferes with other nations' natural evolution and self-determination, usually with extremely negative results.)
The Iran Hostage Crisis, From Wikipedia. . .
Terrorists? Sounds more like an angry and frightened mob to me. The word 'Terrorist' was spun later by the media to create a useful emotional label which is easily applied whenever a Western government wants to create a quick fear reaction and sequester the public from reality.
-FL