{"id":70704,"date":"2013-02-18T17:00:52","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T15:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=70704"},"modified":"2013-02-18T17:03:35","modified_gmt":"2013-02-18T15:03:35","slug":"microsoft-wins-vat-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/70704-microsoft-wins-vat-appeal.html","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft wins VAT appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA<\/a>) committee has upheld an appeal against a prior ruling which found that Microsoft<\/a>‘s VAT exclusive prices for its products are not in line with South Africa’s advertising rules.<\/p>\n

A consumer lodged a complaint against Microsoft\u2019s Office 365 products with the ASA, saying that Microsoft does not include VAT in its pricing which is in contravention of the VAT Act.<\/p>\n

Following the complaint, Microsoft committed to provide clarifying language around the issue of what VAT is applicable.<\/p>\n

However, the South African Revenue Service (SARS<\/a>) said that it is not permissible merely to quote the price excluding VAT and have a statement that VAT has been excluded.<\/p>\n

The ASA ruled against Microsoft, ordering the company to withdraw the advertisement with immediate effect.<\/p>\n

Appeal against Microsoft ruling<\/h3>\n

Microsoft appealed the ruling, saying that the content which was the basis of the complaint has been removed, and that the ASA had incorrectly relied on the SARS opinion.<\/p>\n

It emerged that the services offered in the advert were sourced from Microsoft Ireland, and the only services provided by Microsoft South Africa were marketing services.<\/p>\n

\u201cMicrosoft Ireland was not registered with SARS for VAT and that the price included a zero rating for VAT purposes,\u201d the ASA website stated.<\/p>\n

The ASA committee upheld the appeal, saying that the committee agreed that the opinion obtained in a previous matter by the ASA was not applicable in this matter as the service provider was not located in South Africa and therefore no VAT was applicable.<\/p>\n

\"Microsoft<\/a>

Microsoft Office 365 prices<\/p><\/div>\n

More Microsoft articles<\/h3>\n

Office 365: home users can now rent productivity suite<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Office 365, Office 2013 in SA: prices and availability<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

New Office for consumers from Microsoft<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An ASA committee upheld an appeal against a ruling regarding Microsoft\u2019s VAT exclusive online product prices<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":69996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[351,35,123],"class_list":["post-70704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-asa","tag-headline","tag-microsoft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70704"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70788,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70704\/revisions\/70788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}