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Microsoft Government The Almighty Buck The Courts News

Microsoft Told to Pay Tax on License Fee 282

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."
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Microsoft Told to Pay Tax on License Fee

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  • dear god! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 03, 2008 @12:27AM (#22948086)
    leave the slashdot gui alone!
  • Re:dear god! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) * <qg@biodome.org> on Thursday April 03, 2008 @12:29AM (#22948094) Homepage Journal
    Yeah, I hear ya. WTF guys. I don't need a massive "Reply to This" button.

  • Re:dear god! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 03, 2008 @12:34AM (#22948128)
    I think this is a vast improvement over past GUI on this site, at least since they started messing with it and got rid of viewing things by option at the top of discussions as nested/flat/threaded, etc. Go back to that or keep improving on this one. Its pretty good now.
  • Re:dear god! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by calebt3 ( 1098475 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @12:35AM (#22948138)
    I concur. What were they thinking? This is almost as unusable as idle.slashdot.org
  • Re:dear god! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by argent ( 18001 ) <peter@slashdot . ... t a r o nga.com> on Thursday April 03, 2008 @12:37AM (#22948150) Homepage Journal
    I think they need to roll back the whole frigging site about a year.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 03, 2008 @12:41AM (#22948166)
    "RS 700 crore == 175 Million USD. (a crore is 10 million)."

    Which, in the end, will only cost them 1 million in "donations" to win the higher court appeal.
  • by LaskoVortex ( 1153471 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @12:43AM (#22948176)
    passitontotheconsumer
  • A better icon (Score:4, Insightful)

    by edwardpickman ( 965122 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @12:49AM (#22948216)
    Maybe instead a Borg Bill should be portrayed as Pinocchio.
  • Re:dear god! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @12:50AM (#22948220) Journal
    /. 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:fyi 700 crore (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stox ( 131684 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @01:05AM (#22948298) Homepage
    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:dear god! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wanderingknight ( 1103573 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @01:43AM (#22948466)
    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.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 03, 2008 @01:54AM (#22948524)
    of course they do, but only if you buy their shit
  • Re:dear god! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by techno-vampire ( 666512 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @01:54AM (#22948526) Homepage
    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.
  • by sixtyeight ( 844265 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @02:27AM (#22948664)
    Great piece of evidence in any Microsoft-unfair-business-practices lawsuit, establishing their basis, motive, and degree of integrity.
  • HP and WalMart (Score:5, Insightful)

    by symbolset ( 646467 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @02:43AM (#22948732) Journal

    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?"

  • by ya really ( 1257084 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @03:33AM (#22948926)

    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:Safari (Score:4, Insightful)

    by penix1 ( 722987 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @05:16AM (#22949268) Homepage

    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:dear god! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mcvos ( 645701 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @05:37AM (#22949324)
    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.
  • Re:fyi 700 crore (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @05:57AM (#22949390) Homepage
    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.

    -
  • Re:Safari (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ronanbear ( 924575 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @05:58AM (#22949396)
    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.
  • Your sig agrees with your sentiment.

    I don't know much about the demographics of the area, but I really doubt that a signifigant portion of the population are meth addicts, nor probably a large percentage of those evil poor people. I rather doubt that this tax money would be quickly sent to that small portion of meth addicts (or even those damn people poorer than you), but would probably be distributed to other programs, like... hmmm.. roads, hospitals, police, fire, etc... You might, though, have to share these with those damn slackers, which is sad, since I'm sure they would rather not be burdened with more elitist, faux bourgeoisie, greedy rich people bandying about their self-interested ideas of entitlement.

    Why should corporations pay taxes, or at least obey the law? The society in which corporations are enmeshed are largely responsible for their prosperity, and thus they owe some level of entitlement towards the society as a whole.

    I'm not a socialist, I just think some people fail to realize that in many cases poverty is outside of the control of the individual. Either that or they have to decide this to justify their own crass greed. But then again I'm one of those loons that puts human life, health, and happiness above little green slips of paper.

    down mod at will.

  • Re:fyi 700 crore (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 03, 2008 @07:15AM (#22949618)
    You're not expecting them to actually pay this are you? They never paid the EU, why should they start in India?
  • Re:dear god! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MMC Monster ( 602931 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @07:42AM (#22949684)
    Agree. Slim down the buttons and this will look quite nice.

    An added benefit: I usually middle click on reply instead of left click, so that I keep my place in the thread and don't have to reload the page. Now left click on reply brings the reply box inline with the thread. :-)

    Of course, it will be bette
  • by darkcmd ( 894336 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @09:19AM (#22950386)
    What really disappoints me is how greedy a company can get. They lie to avoid paying taxes in India when they make billions in revenue a year. I guess making billions isn't enough for them.
  • Re:HP and WalMart (Score:3, Insightful)

    by David Gerard ( 12369 ) <slashdot AT davidgerard DOT co DOT uk> on Thursday April 03, 2008 @10:38AM (#22951264) Homepage
    Mod parent +1 on-topic.
  • by Dr.Dubious DDQ ( 11968 ) on Thursday April 03, 2008 @11:19AM (#22951744) Homepage

    I hadn't thought about it before, but considering what the RIA/MPA/BSA and such are costing us in court time and enforcement, perhaps it's time to crank up the royalty tax rates to offset the costs (and I would assume that payments for permission to use patents should also count as "royalties", yes?).

    Certainly a substantial increase in the royalty tax rate should perhaps be a part of any "intellectual property" "reform" bill as proposed by those who profit from it (and perhaps this would encourage people to go back to actually SELLING things and slow the stampede towards the "bribe someone for permission to use under restricted conditions" model...)

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