Ecuador Tax Agency Closes Microsoft Branch Offices

An anonymous reader writes "The Ecuador Tax Agency (SRI) has closed Microsoft branch offices for seven days. 'We have twice requested balances, payment reports and complete tax information, but the company hasn't given it to us, so in accordance with our laws we have proceeded with the closure,' the SRI official in charge of the proceeding said. Microsoft said it was a human mistake."

Comments

OUTRAGE

[Anonymous Coward]

Ecuador holds dominion over the Galapagos Islands. Who made the Galapagos famous? That's right, Darwin... Which happens to be the name of Apple's OS Kernel. COINCIDENCE?

Ha!

[milo_a_wagner]

All your branches are belong to us!

Excel

[MK_CSGuy]

Cue in the Excel jokes just about... now!

Human error

[wjcofkc]

It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been attributable to human error

A human mistake

[NJVil]

"Microsoft said it was a human mistake."

Well, it's highly unlikely they'd admit it was a technology mistake. So, a head will roll, a chair will be thrown, and full faith in Microsoft technology will return to normal in Ecuador.

tax evasion

[ClippySay]

/ You look like you're trying to evade \
\ taxes. May I help you?               /
     \
      \
       \     ____
        \   / __ \
         \  O|  |O|
            ||  | |
            ||  | |
            ||    |
             |___/

Re:Celebrity Section for Slashdot?

[tomhudson]

> "Bill Gates gets a fashion makeover - image slideshow"

They already tried that in the '80s. Didn't work then ... won't work now.

He was posing for a cover shot for newsweek. He held up something, and you could see the hole in his sweaters' armpit. So they had him take off the sweater. Then you got to see the pit stains on his shirt. They had to literally take the shirt off another Microsoft employee's back to get a "clean shot."

"Stinkin' nerdz!"

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[tomhudson]

As opposed to Soviet Korporate Amerika, where Microsoft taxes YOU!

In such a context,

1. couldn't running linux be considered somewhat equivalent to the Boston Tea Party? Or would that be running a pirated copy of Windows?

2. could running a pirated copy of Windows, in the current "Corporatist" environment, be considered a political statement, and as such, be "protected speech", same as flag burning?

Re:First Time

[Farmer Tim]

The first time it may have been a "human" mistake. Second time, I do not think so.

Maybe the first person who made the mistake was fired, and the replacement also happened to make the same mistake.

That's not giving Microsoft the benefit of doubt, I'm thinking of how many times they make the same mistakes over and over, almost like it's company policy.

Also

[jeffasselin]

in completely unrelated news, Microsoft announced that every copy of Windows trying to validate with WGA from Ecuador was found to be non-genuine. The affected systems have started zeroing the data on their hard drives.

Matrix

[weirdcrashingnoises]

MS Agent: Only human.
Ecuador: Dodge this.