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Tax-Free IT Repairs Proposed For the UK
judgecorp writes "Removing tax from computer repairs could have a real impact on the IT industry's carbon footprint, according to a petition of the UK government. Old computer equipment often ends up in landfill, or in toxic illegal re-cycling centers in developing countries, because users think it is not cost-effective to repair it. Making repairs tax free could be a simple bit of financial engineering to encourage skilled jobs and keep electronics out of the waste stream, says the author of the campaign."
The trouble occurs specifically in the PC context. A substantial percentage of PCs that are "broken" are physically perfect in every way, except for a touch of dust and the fact that the magnetic fields on their HDD platters include 3,624 assorted viruses, trojans, pop-up spawners, and the like, along with the OS and user data.
Even if untaxed(as, de facto, a lot of this stuff is, because they end up paying someone's nephew who "knows computers" in cash under the table to fix the problem) cleaning these systems up can eat a lot of tech time. The user never has their restore media, and they always have some programs that they've either lost the CDs for, lost the licence keys for, or "got from work", so you can't just wipe and go, done in 30 minutes. And, of course, no backups.
It is at this point where you say(I've been the "someones nephew who 'knows computers"), "Ok, look: There is nothing wrong with your computer besides software. However, you don't have any of the disks you need, and properly disinfecting your machine will take hours and hours(even if you know what you are doing, and don't fuck around, there'll be so much malware doing disk access by the time they call you that even a basic scan will take ages to complete). I can either do that, and bill you for my time, at a very reasonable rate; but some hours of it, or we can just give Dell $300 and you'll have a computer that is faster and shinier than your present one, and running perfectly, and I'll copy over your documents when it comes. Since you got that copy of Office "from a friend", we'll throw in an extra $50 to have Dell install the OEM version."
And lo, a new computer is ordered.