Microsoft Told to Pay Tax on License Fee

MissingRainbow writes "To avoid paying taxes in India, Microsoft wanted a court to believe that it is selling its product and that there are no royalty payments involved. Their own EULA worked against them in this particular case however as it states, "the product is licensed, not sold". The court ruled against them."

pwndbyowneula tag.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy (963289)]

I suggest two new tags - 'pwndbyowneula' or 'canthaveitbothways' (although the old faithful 'haha' adequately expresses the extent of my sympathy for MS).

Oh, and for those wondering, RS 700 crore == 175 Million USD. (a crore is 10 million).

Re:

[capnkr (1153623)]

...or maybe "openmouthinsertfoot". :)

Glad to see there is some justice still floating around out there...

Re:pwndbyowneula tag.

[russlar (1122455)]

That's almost as good as Safari for Windows' EULA banning itself. eulaselfpwnage?

Re:pwndbyowneula tag.

[russlar (1122455)]

The Safari for Windows EULA has language prohibiting Safari form being installed on anything but a mac. It was posted on slashdot a few days ago. that's the joke I was referencing.

Re:pwndbyowneula tag.

[Divebus (860563)]

The Safari for Windows EULA has language prohibiting Safari form being installed on anything but a mac.

Actually, it must be installed on "Apple labeled hardware". That's what the stickers that came with your iPod are for.

Re:pwndbyowneula tag.

[mpe (36238)]

Actually, it must be installed on "Apple labeled hardware". That's what the stickers that came with your iPod are for.

They probably couldn't complain if you used fruit sticker, so long as it came from an apple.

Re:Safari

[penix1 (722987)]

But I still think it is a stupid decision. They are limiting the market share of their product, in an area where a popular free alternative exists with Firefox. This is not like using MacOS to push hardware sales.

I don't think so. They are saving time, trouble and money by not supporting the problems of non-apple hardware. They are a hardware vendor after all. By not supporting competing hardware they automatically rule out 100s of different configuration problems. All one has to do is look at the fight Mozilla is having keeping up on security / bug issues in FireFox since it was first released for Windows to see that elimination of a subset of problems saves trouble for the developers.

Re:Safari

[ronanbear (924575)]

I thought it was just an oversight. Safari for Windows is important because it's the same browser that the iPhone uses and getting Safari marketshare up on Windows was an important way to improve iPhone compatibility and allow web developers to test pages easily.

Apple don't need a Eula to limit installing when standard disclaimers cover all the configuration problems.

Re:pwndbyowneula tag.

[LaskoVortex (1153471)]

passitontotheconsumer

Got Karma?

[russlar (1122455)]

How appropriate, that in India, the birthplace of Karma, Microsoft gets whacked with a hefty dose of it.

Re:

[timeOday (582209)]

Really? Is there any penalty here, or just back payments? If the latter, it's essentially just a failed gambit, no harm no foul.

Re:

[Alsee (515537)]

According to the article "With the addition of interest payable for all these years, the total tax liability could be about Rs 700 crore". So there doesn't appear to be a "penalty" outside of interest.

However according to my calculations they appear to be charging an annual interest of about 12%. I'm no financial guru, but 12 points seems to me to include rather non-trivial "penalty points" above basic fair market interest rates. I think it is effectively working out in the ballpark of $180 million USD wort

Re:Got Karma?

[mgblst (80109)]

12% = 1200 points. You must get pretty surprised when they announce on the news that Interest Rates are going up 75 points?

Re:Got Karma?

[Alsee (515537)]

Thanx for the fix. Ok, a point equals one percent of one percent. I am now one point closer to being a financial guru :)

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Re:Got Karma?

[naveenoid (1183365)]

Looks like M$ couldnt curry any favours there ;)

Re:Got Korma?

[somersault (912633)]

Korma whoring will get you everywhere, my friend

He who lives ....

[by Anonymous Coward]

He who lives by the EULA, dies by the EULA

Re:He who lives ....

[snl2587 (1177409)]

Gives a new meaning to the term "end user"...

dear god!

[by Anonymous Coward]

leave the slashdot gui alone!

Re:dear god!

[QuantumG (50515)]

Yeah, I hear ya. WTF guys. I don't need a massive "Reply to This" button.

Re:

[Chabil Ha' (875116)]

I like being able to reply to comments inline, but I browse the site with an iphone and the uberbig boxes don't make for a very great browsing experience.

Re:dear god!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot viewing experience may vary for the trendy and pretentious.

Re:dear god!

[TubeSteak (669689)]

/. can do whatever the hell they want to the look of their website.
Just gimme an option in my settings [slashdot.org] to change it back.
Please?

Re:

[edwardpickman (965122)]

Yeah, I hear ya. WTF guys. I don't need a massive "Reply to This" button.

They're trying to appeal to an older half blind crowd. Just be thankful there isn't sound.

Re:

[techno-vampire (666512)]

I am part of that older, half-blind crowd you inconsiderate clod, and I hate the new layout! This isn't improving the appearance of Slashdot, it's changing it for the sake of changing it.

Re:dear god!

[by Anonymous Coward]

I think a good compromise would be to integrate the Reply to this/Parent links into the title/score bar, but align it to the right side. Oh, and for the love of god, don't make the buttons so huge that the bar gets bigger in height.

Re:dear god!

[by Anonymous Coward]

bigger in height

Around here they call that idea "taller."

p.s. Sorry for the smallness in length of this post.

Re:dear god!

[cp.tar (871488)]

I think they need to roll back the whole frigging site about a year.

To what? OMG PWNIEZ?

Re:dear god!

[mcvos (645701)]

I like the Ajaxiness. The only real problem today is the gigantic buttons, but that should be easily fixed.

What I'd like to know is, why do we get a completely revamped UI every week? Why not simply make the obvious improvements and stick to that?
Every other week I discover that folding and unfolding has disappeared or reappeared in a different form. I also like the "quote parent" button, so I'd appreciate if it stopped disappearing all the time.

Well...

[mutube (981006)]

Agreed. Maybe if they made Slashdot look like this [myspace.com] we'd actually get some work done?

Re:dear god!

[AJWM (19027)]

It's worse that than. Those damn oval buttons keep giving me flashbacks of OpenLook.
Hey Slashdot, the 1980s called, they want their GUI back.

Re:dear god!

[i_liek_turtles (1110703)]

Personally, I blame Microsoft.

Re:dear god!

[EdIII (1114411)]

Thank God you said something. I thought I was hallucinating.

Re:dear god!

[Hal_Porter (817932)]

I think it would have been funnier if they introduced the new UI on April 1st and then said on April the 2nd that it wasn't in fact a joke.

Re:dear god!

[Alsee (515537)]

No no, you *almost* had it there... they should have introduced the UI change on March 31. Then on April 1st they could talk about how it was an April Fools gag accidentally went live a day early. Then on April 2nd, as you suggest, they could state the April 1st talk about it being an "accidental early leaked gag" was all a joke.

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Re:

[wanderingknight (1103573)]

Not only this is awful, the sheer amount of javascript they've added makes it practically unusable. I was relatively happy when Firefox 3.0 beta 4 processed the scripts a lot faster than 2.0, making browsing Slashdot comments less of a chore... and now they've brought this abomination to the site.

Re:dear god!

[calebt3 (1098475)]

Ok, unusable is the wrong word. Ugly fits better. At least I can submit a post without opening a new tab now. And one is forced to preview the post.

Re:dear god!

[Alsee (515537)]

forced to preview the post.

Hey hey hey! Watch it there! IT IS TIME TO SPEAK UP!

First the preview-before-posting Nazis came for the people that didn't preview before postsing, but I always preview before posting, so I didn't speak up.
Then the RTFA Nazis came for the people who didn't RTFA before posting, and there was no one left to speak up for me.

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A better icon

[edwardpickman (965122)]

Maybe instead a Borg Bill should be portrayed as Pinocchio.

Is this calculated in the TCO?

[erroneus (253617)]

That would be the "Total Cost of Pwnership!"

Damnit! I have gone for YEARS without using the term or anything similar simply because I thought it was stupid. Now look who's doing it?

Microsoft in the same boat as software "pirates"

[realkiwi (23584)]

So do terrorist software pirates pay tax? Nope http://w3.bsa.org/thailand/press/newsreleases/IDC-Study.cfm [bsa.org]
Well look who is in the same boat...

No Tax on Income or Sales?

[GumphMaster (772693)]

The article implies that there neither sales tax nor company income tax (of the MS subsidiary/partner) exists in India. Is this the case? Is the tax on royalties the only tax income the Indian people get from software peddlers in India?

Tax makes EULA valid?

[Ciggy (692030)]

The only thing that slightly worries me about this: if the EULA is what is causing MS to pay the tax, then in paying the tax, MS can clearly say that the EULA is valid (in India at least) as the government has demanded legal taxes based on it.

Re:If only Washington State would tax Microsoft to

[Robert1 (513674)]

You said billion twice for emphasis, even though it clearly says million even in the article's damn title.

attention whoring or just ad revenue?

[ya really (1257084)]

by newscloud (1037538) * on Thursday April 03, @12:24AM (#22948060) Homepage

Washington State Legislators (who are greatly funded by Microsoft employees and corporate donations) have refused to close this $528 billion tax loophole [newscloud.com] ... yes Billion!

Posting your own articles, eh? I don't exactly believe that's right. Although what for sure isn't right is not only posting your own article to your own blog, but also MISQUOTING your own article:

"Microsoft's $528 million Washington tax break"

Seriously, misrepresenting news in order to get people to read it? I'd expect that from Fox or CBS, but posting this rubbish on slashdot, that's just pathetic.

Re:Obligatory

[Whiney Mac Fanboy (963289)]

This must mean that 2008 will be the year of Linux on the desktop!

Totally offtopic, please mod me down, but 2008 is the year of Linux on the desktop already!

Asus can't make enough eeePCs to meet demand, other retailers are coming out with cheap linux desktop products, Linux is finally being offered as an alternative by system builders.

Re:

[Enderandrew (866215)]

HP is rolling out openSUSE on their computers I do believe. And WalMart has been selling Linux desktops.

WalMart is about as mainstream as you can get.

HP and WalMart

[symbolset (646467)]

Have both been selling machines with Linux for many years. HP offers Linux on, I believe, nearly every box they sell and drivers for nearly every printer.

Instead let's talk instead about the eee PC from ASUS, and the clones of it, and all those hot new cheap mini laptops and mobile internet devices based on Intel's Atom that won't run Vista.

Microsoft had better pay their taxes while they still can.

XP dies in June. Unless they extend it every last one of those boxes is going out the door with Intel's MobiLinux or a distro that supports that platform. Let's talk about BMW, where Linux comes standard with many models.

Forget Linux on the desktop. 2008 is the year of Linux in your pocket, in your dashboard, in your cable box, on your lap and bringing the third world online without contributing too much to global warming. Desktop? What do you need a desk for any more? Next year that question may read "What's a desk?"

Re:fyi 700 crore

[stox (131684)]

So, in other words, less than Microsoft pays per year for power alone. I don't think this is going to make much of a dent in their budget.

Re:fyi 700 crore

[Alsee (515537)]

So, in other words, less than Microsoft pays per year for power alone.

Yeah, but usually those power payments are made to politicians, not courts.

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