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UK Government to Tax Linux?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thu Apr 01, 2004 02:15 PM
from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
Software Linux
An anonymous reader writes "The UK government is looking at introducing a tax aimed at software published under GNU GPL. It claims that because programmers do it for free, it is losing out on income tax and that commercial software companies (read Microsoft) are at a disadvantage. Some pressure group has already put up a website with more details and news site Techworld have got a quote from a Treasury spokesman saying that they're only considering it."
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  • OMG (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:15PM (#8739779)
    Worst April Fool's article ever

    • Re:OMG (Score:5, Funny)

      by Total_Wimp (564548) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:40PM (#8740100)
      So, are all of the articles today April Fools jokes or are some of them real?

      I'm just picturing an out-of-work programer named B0b getting taxed for developing open source missles and then needing to get free food to survive and keep programing. B0b's a tough, dedicated bastard.

      TW

  • Even a 100% tax is ok (Score:5, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok (451306) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:16PM (#8739782)
    What is 100% of "free"?

    • Re:Even a 100% tax is ok (Score:4, Informative)

      by bheer (633842) <rbheer.gmail@com> on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:24PM (#8739923)
      I know this is a joke, but in a way the UK (any .gov, really) bills open source already. Folk who install/deploy/sell Linux solutions pay Value Added Tax on the services they render. The only reason open source volunteers are -- and will remain -- exempt is that they don't enter into transactions with the organizations they're volunteering code to. You can't tax volunteer activity.

      • Actually, the reason they can't use the VAT on open source work is that usually, there is no value-added.

        Yeah, I got karma to burn.

      • You can't tax volunteer activity

        Oh yes, my government can.

        If you build a house in my country, and get help from a volunteering friend, you have to be extremely careful to avoid paying VAT on his/her services. The government will assess the house, and calculate a higher VAT amount if they think that you haven't payed enough.

        • VAT is sales tax and is chargeable on anything not considered "essential". The definition is somewhat subjective. VAT is not, for instance, charged on children's clothes {though it is charged on adults' clothes} nor on basic foodstuffs for preparation at home {but it is charged on take-away food}. Newspapers, magazines and books are not subject to VAT either.

    • What? (Score:5, Funny)

      by vwjeff (709903) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:34PM (#8740039)
      Another April Fools article. We all know that Linux is not real. You can't tax something that does not exist. Grow up people.
      • Another April Fools article. We all know that Linux is not real

        Yeah, I heard that they stole all the code from SCO.

    • RTFA (Score:3, Informative)

      by Beliskner (566513)
      What is 100% of "free"?
      RTFA! They want to tax the sale of open source software. I can see their point, if I'm on welfare and I write an OSS version of Oracle 10i which gets included free into the next version of Mandrake, I've just put ten thousand Oracle people out of their jobs, and if Oracle goes bankrupt, then the Country's Banks will have to write off those massive debts. Argentina comes to mind.
    • Ah, but it's not 100% of free [newsforge.com]

    • Re:Even a 100% tax is ok (Score:5, Informative)

      by Gadzinka (256729) <rrw@hell.pl> on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:56PM (#8740272) Journal
      No, it isn't.

      There was an attempt in Poland to tax linux this way. The thinking behind it was that if it is a gift for a commercial entity, than said entity has to pay Donation and Inheritance tax for it. And the base for this tax wouldn't be the price paid (zero). As it is with all donations, the base for the purpose of taxation is normal market price. Polish Revenue Service wanted it to be price of MS Office for OOo and price of Win NT/2k for Linux system.

      Now, this news we are writing about is April 1st, but the history with trying to tax Linux, Open Office etc in Poland was true. Luckily it failed, although Finance Ministry didn't issue official statement or act about it in order to not tie hands of some enterprising clerks in revenue service.

      Unfortunatelly I cannot find anything about it in English. If you know Polish google for site:linuxnews.pl podatek [google.pl]

      Robert

  • That sucks (Score:5, Funny)

    by NanoGator (522640) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:16PM (#8739783) Homepage Journal
    At least with the Microsoft tax, I get a neat holographic coaster.

  • tax it all you want... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hooya (518216) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:16PM (#8739790) Homepage
    a 100% sales tax on $0 = $0. sheesh.
    • Er, no. It is 100% tax on $699 surely?

      I make that ... $699!
    • That's totally irrelevant, my friend, as a 100% tax on zero pounds sterling = 0 pounds.

    • Re:tax it all you want... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by zakezuke (229119) on Thursday April 01 2004, @05:04PM (#8741691)
      a 100% sales tax on $0 = $0. sheesh.

      I wanted to give my niece my old car. The car was a piece of junk, but it was a running piece of junk. If I were to "give" her the car, then the state would charge her tax on what it estimates it's value to be, which I'm told was between $750-$1500... basicly base price for a running car. Tax in her region would have been 8.5% if i'm not mistaken... plus misc fees and such. Fair and reasonable, but still a $63.75 fee + misc other fees involved in the transfer of a car and yearly taxes.

      Even selling it to her for $1.00 the state would be skeptical as to whether this was an honest deal, or a trick to avoid paying sales tax. I had to sign an statement of the car's value. Which was fine by me.. I signed a statement saying "it's had accidents, it has over 350,000 miles on it, family $1.00, non family $100.00".

      The point is you can tax things with no value, or little value. It could be a flat non percent tax, or a tax of what the goverment believes the value should be.

  • Thank God! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Knight Thrasher (766792) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:16PM (#8739792) Journal
    Real news on April 1st! Thank you! And please dear LORD no Open Source Tax!

    • Re:Thank God! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Real news on April 1st! ...to make up for the bullshit we get on the other 364 days.

  • Great (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:16PM (#8739801)
    So, a tax on my free time is it?

    What next? Sexual Enjoyment Tax??

    • Re:Great (Score:5, Funny)

      by bigHairyDog (686475) * on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:19PM (#8739841)

      What next? Sexual Enjoyment Tax??

      No, I think most /.ers would be immune from that one...

      Bernie :o)

    • Re:Great (Score:4, Funny)

      by Phekko (619272) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:23PM (#8739907)
      What, in Britain? Don't be daft, nobody enjoys it there ;)

    • Re:Great (Score:5, Funny)

      by gellenburg (61212) <george@ellenburg.org> on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:26PM (#8739952) Homepage Journal
      Yes.

      It would be called the Sexual Enjoyment Tax Initiative.

      We will be releasing a distributed client to assist in this endeavour called "SETI@Home".

      Have a good day.

    • thingy! (Score:4, Funny)

      by stevenrieder (698445) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:31PM (#8740009)
      Obligatory Monty Python sketch:

      Third Official: "Well most things we do for pleasure nowadays are taxed, except one."
      Politician: "What do you mean?"
      Third Official: "Well, er, smoking's been taxed, drinking's been taxed but not ... thingy."
      Politician: "Good Lord, you're not suggesting we should tax... thingy?"
      First Official: "Poo poo's?"
      Third Official: "No."
      First Official: "Thank God for that. Excuse me for a moment." (leaves)
      Third Official: "No, no, no - thingy."
      Second Official: "Number ones?"
      Third Official: "No, thingy."
      Politician: "Thingy!"
      Second Official: "Ah, thingy. Well it'll certainly make chartered accountancy a much more interesting job."

    • Re:Great (Score:5, Funny)

      by Mateito (746185) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:47PM (#8740169) Homepage
      > What next? Sexual Enjoyment Tax??

      You're not married, are you?
      Some of us already pay that.

      (You insensitive clod!)

    • Re:Great (Score:4, Funny)

      by w42w42 (538630) on Thursday April 01 2004, @03:14PM (#8740473)
      Already done. It's called child.

  • Very cute. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jaywalk (94910) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:17PM (#8739808) Homepage
    And the "what you can do" plea to get readers to get major news organizations to pick up the story is a nice touch. Nice example of viral marketing. It would be a bit more convincing -- but less funny -- if they got people to write Parliament instead.

    I'd dearly love to see Forbes get suckered by this one. They've been such dorks about anything to do with Linux, it would be par for the course. It looks like they bought [forbes.com] the Google mail story hook, line and sinker.

    • Re:Very cute. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Draoi (99421) * <draiocht AT mac DOT com> on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:29PM (#8739982) Journal
      It looks like they bought the Google mail story hook, line and sinker.

      Actually, it's true [forbes.com]

      And hey look, Slashdot got a mention;

      "It's going to go down in history as one of the biggest pranks ever pulled," wrote one message poster at Slashdot.org, which bills itself as a news provider for nerds.
  • This one's too scary and too possibly real to be funny.

    Anyone familiar with the use of emminent domain to seize low value property and give it to private developers to turn into something worth some property taxes?

  • Come on, enough is enough. This one is so bad that I don't even have to look at the references to know its an April Fools joke.

  • ...will be taxed for building houses for free.

    As a member of the Union of Concerned Carpenters, I applaud this new policy.
  • The 8% sales tax comes to $55.92 per Linux installation.
  • x% of $0.00 = right...

    Otherwise, its not a fair tax.

  • If it only was a joke (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pdan (624244) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:23PM (#8739894)
    In my country (Poland) a few years ago they decided that they should put VAT (value added tax) on free software. They found some law that enables tax officials to reassess value of goods if they seem underpriced. They assumed value of a Linux distro to be a price (not value of course) of Windows Server and for Open Office of MS Office Pro.
    Fortunately all media ridiculed this idea and they backed off.

  • The Brits Would Tax Your TV If They Could... (Score:5, Funny)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx (565205) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:25PM (#8739936)
    The Brits Would Tax Your TV If They Could...oh wait...

    • Re:The Brits Would Tax Your TV If They Could... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by radish (98371) on Thursday April 01 2004, @03:11PM (#8740434) Homepage
      Funny that. I recently moved to NYC from London, and although there's no TV License here, I have a whole bunch of weird surcharges and taxes on my cable bill (other than regular sales tax). These add up to considerably more than my TV License used to cost in the UK. So I pay more, and get much worse TV for it. Oh well.

  • Microsoft wants this. (Score:3, Funny)

    by rice_burners_suck (243660) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:31PM (#8740007)
    Upon receipt of this news, Bill Gates ordered every lobbyist at Microsoft to stop whatever they're doing and lobby the government for a tax on GPL software in the U.S. as well.

  • Great day for bad news (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rjelks (635588) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:38PM (#8740081) Homepage
    This is a little offtopic like many of the posts today. What better day to release a bomb on the tech community. If I were in charge of PR for a government agency or large company, I'd use April 1st to announce bad news. No one would believe it. Not that I think the UK is going to tax linux, but I wonder if anyone is sneaking in potentially bad news today in the hopes that it will be ignored as a joke.

    -

  • Time to tax IE and all of the other free software. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by westfirst (222247) * on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:39PM (#8740090)
    Microsoft "gives away" IE. Sounds like a taxable item to me. And they give away plenty of other pieces of software for various reasons. Salesforces everywhere are known for claiming that someone is getting thousands of dollars of freebees, if they only purchase this minute. Gads, I think proprietary software companies "give away" more software than open source groups.

  • I don't remember ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ToadMan8 (521480) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:41PM (#8740106)
    April fools being this Stupid. An I getting older or is this year particularly Stupid? what a waste to have Mod points today! And to make matters Worse, SlashDot's accuracy typically so questionable I have no idea which to take as seriously as usual.
    • The thing is its just not really funny anymore. Now we know to expect it and that takes all of the fun out of it. Really it would be better to make this a regular news day and then add in one fake story.

      April fools and big pranks are still funny depending on the situation. Just not at slashdot.

  • If it can be taxed, donations can be deducted! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ibirman (176167) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:43PM (#8740131) Homepage
    I gave away at least 100 CDs with Linux on them over the past year. Can I take a tax deduction on each one?

    What will the UK value each copy at? I would say a complete distribution with software should be valued at $50,000US. So my charitable contributions are easily worth a few million.

  • This just in... (Score:5, Funny)

    by GPLDAN (732269) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:46PM (#8740158)
    The UK has decided to Tax performances of Shakespeare in the park. "Giving away performances of Hamlet lowers the box office revenues of England's finest theaters", Tony Blair was heard to say. "It's got to stop, this giving things away. It's anti-Ameri... uh, it's not becoming of the nation."

    Elsewhere, the Queen Mum was heard to exclaim, "Taxation, taxation, taxation! My forefathers believed in it, and look what happened to them!"

    • Re:Looking for a date! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What the fuck? I just got mod points and I tried to mod this post up. When I did I got a message that said it was "administratively frozen" and that users cannot moderate it.

      WTF?!?!?!

    • Re:OK, I'm bored (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NanoGator (522640) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:23PM (#8739895) Homepage Journal
      "OK, I'm bored of the April fools jokes... 5 in one day is excessive."

      Every single April 1st, there's always some git who gets modded up for saying the exact same thing. Slashdot's been running 365/24/7, you can can take a day off for silliness.

    • Re:OK, I'm bored (Score:5, Funny)

      by chef_raekwon (411401) on Thursday April 01 2004, @02:24PM (#8739920) Homepage
      of the April fools jokes... 5 in one day is excessive.

      you think that is excessive - maybe you should try working instead of trolling on slashdot. now that, is excessive, my friend.

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