SC scraps duty on loaded software

Indian PC manufacturers have another good news to cheer for. Supreme Court

has ruled that no excise duty is payable on software loaded on com-puters. The

Excise Depart-ment had argued that opera-tional software was part of the PC and

therefore duty should be paid on the total value of the computer.

The apex court also rejected suggestions from the Depart-ment that PCs with

license software should not be com-pared with a disc, floppy or CD-ROM available

in the market separately.

The three-judge bench hea-ded by Justice Santosh Hegde, which upheld the

appeal by Acer India and other PC makers, explained that computer and

operational software are dif-ferent marketable commo-dities. The excise duty on

com-puters is 16 percent whereas that on the software is nil.

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