This is a form of the individual mandate, whereby an online retailer imposes a tax on IE 7 users (for not using an upgraded browser) :
An online retailer has pledged to attach a 6.8 percent tax to any purchases made from the Internet Explorer 7 browser.
The added fee went into effect yesterday on Kogan.com and shows up as “Internet Explorer 7 TAX (6.8%) on a user’s bill upon checkout. This can, of course, be avoided by upgrading to the most recent version of Internet Explorer, IE9, or using another, current browser.
“The way we’ve been able to keep our prices so low is by using technology to make our business efficient and streamlined,” Kogan wrote in a blog post. “One of the things stopping that is our Web team having to spend a lot of time making our new website look normal on IE7.”
Why 6.8 percent? Kogan said it is 0.1 percent for every month IE7 has been on the market.
Those on non-Microsoft browsers will not face a surcharge; Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome employ frequent, automatic updates, so users do not have to worry about upgrading themselves.
What do you think?
Should IE 7 users be taxed like this?