Indian ISPs Taxed for Generating "Light Energy"

CaptKeen writes, "The Hindu is reporting that the Indian Government is trying to tax optical broadband providers (think fiber to the premises) for generating 'light energy.' According to the Commercial Tax Department, optical broadband providers operate on light energy which is 'artificially created and sold to customers for the purpose of data transmission and information.' This classification would make Internet access goods (since you are buying light) as opposed to service — and would be subject to a 12.5% VAT."

Well,

[revlayle]

it's gotta be a cheaper tax than that *heavy* energy...

100 phothons please

[BSAtHome]

That will be billed per photon then?

Oh noes!!!11!

[skraps]

Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

Oh noes, they already shut off the light!

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds reasonable and ingenious.

Well, then...

[GillBates0]

...I generate "wind energy" several times a day, but I don't ask the Government to pay for it, do I.

Here's an idea

[Mayhem178]

Let's put them all on a shuttle and send to them collect billions of years of back taxes from the sun.

Light Goods

[celardore]

This classification would make Internet access goods (since you are buying light) as opposed to service

I used to work for a logistics company, and we dealt with 'light goods' all the time.


Oh.

Better than here

[iamacat]

We don't even get fiber to premises in Bay Area.

Please Help Us

[LiquidCoooled]

We are looking to find an algorythm which can compress data into as many 0's as possible.
We will pay handsomly for such an algorythm since our light bill will be substantially lowered.
Note, we have already tried piping the data through /dev/null and whilst this has the desired effect, we cannot rebuild the data at the other end.
In this case, the lights are off but we are home.

Incidentally, our engineers did try to come up with a novel way to transmit binary data using darkness alone.
We transmitted a zero as a single off state, and a one as a double off state, this saves electricity and light but our engineers are again having trouble reading it.

Re:What next, tax the bible?

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Yeah, why not? In the same vein that cigarette tax goes to fund the health budget, the bible tax could fund the military budget.

Re:Well, then...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're generating methane. That is a taxable energy source. You're gonna have to bottle that by law, so it can be metered. Or, we can have a meter attached...

Re:100 phothons please

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I get a tax refund if my upload ration is larger than one ?

Best wishes to the Indian government

[Sergeant Beavis]

I wish you 100% success in your initiative to tax light energy from Indian ISPs

You will single handedly kill outsourcing to your country. Many American IT workers will deliver many thanks upon you

Re:Imperialism well taught

[kfg]

. . .india ran on salt, and by taxing it the British controlled it. . . It makes me wonder if they have even read their history.

Why yes, yes they have.

KFG

Big Endian/Little Endian, 1/0

[NRAdude]

What people don't comprehend is who the goverment is authorized to collect from. A foreign state can already collect the tax, whereas another foreign state is hindered from collecting said tax for whatever governing has already been rendered. The people can't be taxed twice, because government is applied to reprove the security and efficiency of a process. A government that collects a tax and renders no improvement, is not government; it lays down its sovereignty and becomes that of a private citizen, able to sue and be sued, own property and compete with fellow offers of the common good.

Going to the books, it would be trivial to find the loophole if the information is considered to be "the light" emit through the fiber-optic lines. The company could just as easily switch that the dark is the binary-closed/1 and the light is the binary-open/0. Then they could just as well reason on whether the information is derived or carries its Endian order of data, just for bringing the intellectual-property of a State through the process to prevent anyone from trying to attach any government to intellectual property that has already been governed. Wherever there is benefit, there is a right for a Body to govern that benefit. Given that most mail matter is tainted with commercial suggestions from worldly intellectual-property organized by trustees in a corporation known as WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ORGANIZATION, it would seem that most governing is a suggestion enticed by the presumption to attain said services by not Refusing For Cause an Invitation or Offer from said foreign state.

Surely, everyone on Slashdot knows how to fill their Bench and move the Court; without politic, it's mindless limited liability offers from a corporation.

Re:This may be an Indian "April Fools"

[Neoncow]

It's also World Mental Health Day [wikipedia.org]. Indian politicians are challenging us to question their mental stability.

Re:Psst...

[russ1337]

In many countries you get money back if you can contribute to the grid. So, all I have to do is shine a light down the fibre, perhaps using the sun as a light source, and charge them! Somehow, I doubt they'll fall for this thou'.

What about a tax break for giving back some of the light with each packet sent? - you have requests 'going out', and for each packet you receive you send back some kind of ACK.

Re:Not Really...

[ackthpt]

But they can tax it both directions. The customer has to have lasers to send respose packets and upload whatever it is they need to upload. They can tax bot the Tx and Rx parts!!

"Shut down error detection, shut down parity checking, shut down acknowledgements, shut down all outgoing light." - Memo from the PHB

Re:Lawyers

[revlayle]

Silly person, all lawyers are crazy. They're nowhere near "sound"! ;)

Re:And it's not really light either, instead...

[cp.tar]

...it would be more accurate to refer to it as "heat" since all fiber optic network devices pretty much operate at invisible infrared wavelengths.

Which gives me an excellent idea, even if I say so myself.

What do you mean, "light energy"? Here, look at this plugged-in-at-the-other-end optical cable... can you see anything? Any light?
Look again, I'm sure you'll see it eventually...

Re:Well,

[killa62]

Alaska just called, they want their Ted Stevens back.

Re:Light is Free

[forkazoo]

The fiberoptic light energy is a *free* service, available to anyone without charge.

However, if you would like the ISP to modulate some well-timed *dark* spots in the line for the purposes of data transmission, *that* is going to cost you.

Since darkness (the absence of light) can't be defined as a product, no VAT.

Problem solved.

Wait... So, you want to charge people for *not* shooting a laser at them. That's bloody brilliant.

Taxing the *correct* bits

[billstewart]

First of all, you can only tax the 1-bits, not the 0-bits, so the tax thugs have over-estimated by a factor of two. Second, as other people have pointed out, the customer is also transmitting light back, so the *real* energy transmission that would be subject to VAT is at most the number of excess 1-bits transmitted from the carrier to the customer, because this is a value-ADDED tax. So probably no more than 1% of the bits are excess one-bits, and therefore no more than 1% should be taxable, and if you were to measure the traffic you could probably get a better estimate.

Now, if you want to do the accounting properly, you should separate out the cost of the energy used in producing the light, as opposed to the cost of the information. So the wattage used to drive the transmission gear ought to be easy to measure, because that's the energy used to generate light. What percentage of the total electricity used by the ISP goes to the lasers, as opposed to the servers, routers, etc.? How much did they spend on electricity? How much is that as a percentage of the total price of the service?

If the stupid tax thugs want to cripple their economy through rent-seeking, make sure they only get the correct rent...

When I first started working with Indian businesses in the early 90s, my opinion was that the best thing anybody could do for the world economy was to ask their telecom regulation bureaucrats how much of a bribe it would take to get them to go away and leave everybody alone. A billion dollars? Pay it! Of course, nobody did that, but telecom did gradually get some partial liberalization, and the Bangalore call center business alone went from near-zero to a billion dollars, then two, then five billion a year, and I've lost track of its growth since then. There's still a lot of trouble - VSNL had a lock on the submarine cable landings, so there were terabits of traffic going by the harbor in Mumbai but only a few gigabits were allowed to land, and they were very expensive because of their scarcity and the toll they extracted for using the services, whereas other carriers can haul bandwidth around the country for costs (as opposed to prices) that resemble the costs in the EU or US. India may have economic development issues that make it a bit more expensive, but that's more like a factor of 2, not 10, and the cost of right-of-way for cable routes should probably be much lower, which makes up for some of it.

Re:Gravity well tax?

[Oswald]

I'm sorry, what did you say? I started daydreaming after you said "really heavy rack."

Re:Gravity well tax?

[ScentCone]

I'm sorry, what did you say? I started daydreaming after you said "really heavy rack."

Like I said, "value added." But, no extra charge, today.

particle or wave?

[OrangeTide]

So India will finally decide if a photon is a particle or a wave [wikipedia.org]?

this is great! SCREW YOU EINSTEIN!

Re:Well,

[AK Marc]

No, we don't.

Too bad we can't get a rebate on "stupid"...

[CptNerd]

It's a shame we can't get a tax credit for every bit of "stupid" that government generates, of course, if we did then the government wouldn't get any revenue.

Trouble with this law, US providers might see it and decide to start charging users for the light they "use".