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."

Comments

Tomato

[aralin]

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.

Re:Tomato

[jfengel]

The tomato is botanically a fruit, since it contains the seeds. But fruits are taxed differently from vegetables, and since the tomato is treated more like a vegetable than a fruit in cooking, it took the Supreme Court to decide that this fruit was in fact a vegetable. (Presumably the same applies to squash, which are nearly identical to watermelons botanically; the latter is eaten as a fruit and the former as a vegetable.)

But if we genetically engineer them to put the RSA code on them, then I guess they'd be a munition. They're also good for throwing at bad actors.

Re:This may be an Indian "April Fools"

[OmnipotentEntity]

News to me and to wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_10