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 Department that PCs
with license software should not be compared with a disc, floppy or CD-ROM
available in the mar-ket separately. The three-judge bench headed by Justice
San-tosh Hegde explained that computer and operational soft-ware are different
marketable commodities. The excise duty on computers is 16 percent whe-reas that
on the software is nil.
CyberMedia News
New Delhi