Oz online retailer imposes ‘world’s first tax’ on Microsoft Internet Explorer 7

June 15, 2012 | Business | Written by

Washington, June 15: An Australian online retailer, Kogan.com, has introduced the world’s first “tax” on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) browser.

Customers who use IE7 will now have to pay an extra surcharge on online purchases made through the firm’s site.

Chief executive of the retail firm, Ruslan Kogan said he wanted to recoup the time and costs involved in “rendering the website into an antique browser”.

The charge is set to 6.8 percent – 0.1 percent for every month since the IE7 launch, while every month the surcharge will rise by 0.1 percent.

According to Kogan, the idea was born when the company started working on a site relaunch.

Kogan said that even though only three percent of his customers used the old version of the browser, his IT team had become pre-occupied with making adaptations to make pages display properly on IE 7.

“I was constantly on the line to my web team. The amount of work and effort involved in making our website look normal on IE7 equalled the combined time of designing for Chrome, Safari and Firefox,” the BBC quoted Kogan, as saying.

Kogan said it was unlikely that anyone would actually pay the charges, and his goal is mainly encourage users to download a more up-to-date version of Internet Explorer or a different browser. (ANI)