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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.
...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
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
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
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.
News to me and to wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_10
"Build a man a fire warm him for a day, set a man on fire and warm him for the rest of his life."
This article is inducing some serious cognitive dissonance for me. I find this article seriously disturbing.
Taking the taxman's position in this article, one could impose the VAT on cellular telephone providers as they are doing the same thing, exhanging money for a specially encoded form of electromagnetic radiation. That's right - the only difference between visible light and radio waves is the frequency. You can not hold visible light in your hand just as you can not hold any EM waves.
And FM radio gives their radiation away for free...must be communists or something
"Physics is to math what sex is to masturbation." - Richard Feynman
Unfortunately, to paraphrase Faraday, nothing is too stupid to be true.
In some jurisdictions compressed air is considered a "tangible commodity" and therefore subject to sales tax (not VAT or GST, but ordinary sales tax that nominally applies only to manufactured goods.) The dive shop in my home town had a letter from the provincial government posted explaining this, as a lot of customers were asking, "Why the hell to I have to pay provicial sales tax when I get my tanks filled--isn't this a service? And aren't services not subject to provincial sales tax?"
So the bottom line is that governments have always been willing to redefine terms and just make stuff up when it helps generate tax revenue. Much like every other human organization, in fact.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
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.
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
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.
It's also World Mental Health Day. Indian politicians are challenging us to question their mental stability.
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