Filtered

eBay's Australian tax headache

Last Tuesday I jumped in the back of a cab at the Australian Technology Park, bound for Sydney's CBD, after a colleage at the SMH offered me a seat. I cheerily introduced myself to the other passenger who was already in the back seat. "Oh, Mark Jones! We know you," she exclaimed. "I work at eBay." We all broke out in nervous laughter.

It turns out she was one of eBay's government lobbists, and this was the day I had broken my second story in as many weeks on eBay's status as a Switzerland-registered company that does not issue invoices to Australian merchants with GST included.   

I'm flattered The Australian followed my story today, quoting my sources, and I hear it's been picked up on radio. What's unfolding is a story about one of the great elephants in the room as far as multinational Internet companies are concerned -- if a transaction happens in cyberspace, which government collects the tax? eBay has operated at a loss for the past couple of years in Australia, as I first reported, because its offshore arm that managed the ebay.com.au domain directly collects the transaction revenues. If eBay thought this thing was going to blow over, it seems they were mistaken.

Update: I wrote a feature on "who pays tax in cyberspace" which was published in this weekend's AFR. Sorry that I can't point to it here cos our website doesn't permit such things. But to give you a flavour of the piece, it makes the point that 10 yrs ago the ATO issued reports dealing with the problems posed by e-commerce on the internet. A decade later, and we've still got apparently loopholes in Australia's tax legislation that let multinational Internet companies like eBay send revenues derived from Australian consumers straight offshore. One of eBay's defences, if you can call it that, is they are not the only company doing this.

Meanwhile, The Australian also ran a small piece this weekend pushing the fear and loathing angle around the fact that eBay has handed the ATO the full contact details of its large merchant sellers as part of an investigation into who is incorrectly claiming GST on eBay invoices. This is normal behaviour - they handed the ATO these details three years ago, and it states in eBay's user agreement that they will share those details with the ATO and the government. What doesn't seem to have been picked up in the reporting tho, is that eBay actually wants its merchants to be investigated because they have a bias in favour of the small "mum & dad" auctioneers. Recent fee hikes were designed to disadavantage the large merchant community, and make life better for smaller auctioneers and retailers. What's confusing to me is that at the same time, eBay has gone out and told the world they want to take on Australia's big offline retailers. How can you do that without big merchants in your eBay community?

Links are dead, right?

Steve Gillmor has the uncanny ability to proclaim a technology is dead, long before it's actually dead in the sense of not being used. But if it's going to be dead soon, it's dead now, goes the argument. I had fun being a fly on the wall at InfoWorld when he really upset IBM by proclaiming Notes is Dead.

His next big meme last year was "links are dead." And so it was memories of these stories that came flooding back when reading this piece lamenting the fact that the 2000 Bloggers project has killed the value of links forever. I guess Steve would argue they were already dead, so what's your point?

I've been thinking about this from another angle. I made my way over to Ad:Tech Sydney this morning to see MySpace's Shawn Gold and participate in a panel discussion on blogging. (Just as an aside, I got the official figures and there were 600 people in the room for the keynote -- that's big for Sydney. Australia's online community is going NUTS I tell you).

Shawn's take on the whole social networking thing is that people want their 15 minutes of fame (just like all the people on 2000 Bloggers who dream of being a so-called A-List personality, it would seem). Except with social networking, "everyone is famous for 15 people". Of course, most people are already famous for at least 15 people in the offline world, it's just now we have another way of creating fame online.

So can you blame people for jumping on the 2000 Bloggers bandwagon? No, people want fame. Should we have seen it coming? No, but who sees any of these things coming (apart from Steve)? So are links really dead now? The evidence is mounting, it would seem.

So the question is what comes next? Maybe we should start Blog Survivor and vote the A-list people off the proverbial digital island and start all over again. Anyone got a better idea?

Oh, and while you ponder that bit of inspiration, Vicorp has posted this promo-video from Ad:Tech which includes a Shawn Gold quote (and some shopping centre-style music I'm afraid). And here's Ross Dawson's post on the subjects covered during our blogging panel this afternoon. (Ok, that's the last link for the day, since they are supposed to be dead. :)

Update: Darren Rowse has a great overview of Ad:Tech day one here, and Andrew Pascoe's linked to a few bloggers at the show.

Silicon Beach

California has Silicon Valley. Sydney's got Silicon Beach. Where would you rather live?

Joshua Gliddon has his first page one in today's AFR - go get a copy! He's grabbled hold of the "Silicon Beach" moniker coined by Tilefile's David Bollinger.

I'll tell you why this is a big story. There's truckloads of money available for web startups in Australia if they've got a good business model. But many of the new companies Joshua quotes (such as Atlassian, Tangler, Quotify and the Freshview boys pictured on page 1 with their surf boards) are building companies with real revenues and real customers. That's a good story now, but think about what value they are creating for the future. Any potential M&A activity will be grounded in discussions about real numbers and not just pie-in-the-sky evaluations.

And in case you're wondering, the idea for this yarn surfaced when I met these guys at Stirr Sydney.

Vista jargonistas

As we media types shivered our way through the Windows Vista launch in Sydney yesterday (very efficient air conditioning), an irony flashed through the mind.

This was Microsoft's big corporate launch. It's all about proving Vista, Office et al is a vital piece of technology infrastructure that directly impacts the corporate bottom line. Non-IT business leaders need to know this stuff. But amusingly enough, Microsoft didn't really turn down the jargon-o-metre - although to their credit there was only one mention of Web services.

So with tongue firmly in cheek, here's my Windows Vista Launch Top 10 Jargon List:

1. Productivity
2. Collaboration
3. Innovation
4. Flexibility
5. Agility
6. Speed
7. Seamless
8. Unified
9. Strategic
10. Governance

Thoughts on Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Google just launched Google Docs & Spreadsheets, a service that combines Google Spreadsheets (formerly in beta) and Writely, the online word processor it bought earlier this year.

I've been digging around on the site after interviewing some Google product managers this morning about the release. A couple of quick observations.

• It's completely intuitive and has a 'clean' UI like other Google services.
• The collaboration features seem powerful. Microsoft is building similar collaboration features into the next version of Office. But that's not until January (or later??), and it costs big bucks. Windows Vista Ultimate costs AUD$751 in Australia. That's close to the price of a desktop PC!
• Auto-save is probably its 'saving grace', as it were. It seems to negate the risk of an online app as it saves the document before your browser crashes, as mine just did, or if you lose your connection.
• It's a free sign-up, unlike previous invite-only exercises. That's Google code for "we really want you to use this thing."
• The Google product managers I interviewed said they don't have a Powerpoint equivalent in the wings. Even if Google does, I'm sure they wouldn't tell me. But it's not an impossible thought. Docs & Spreadsheets already allows you to save your document as a Word file, PDF, RTF, OpenOffice etc. What's to stop them adding PPT ...
• What I really want is complete integration with Gmail, Talk etc.

What do you reckon?

btw, if you're keen for a peek, here's a screen shot:

Revenge of the paperback

The Om-ster notes that Boeing's "broadband in the sky" has died from lack of interest. Shame. I reckon the bigger question for all you jet-setters is whether you will be able to use a laptop at all in the future.

The British bomb scare means that there's a strong possibility we Aussies will eventually join the clear plastic bag crowd. Ironically, it's good news for those of us in the dead tree business.

All that fuss about Bill Gates

So I was going to write some great big yarn about how significant it was that Bill Gates will take another step further away from his geek roots in 2008. But then I wrote 1300 words about it on Friday for the Weekend AFR, and well, that was enough. But I notice this morning that Cameron did my work for me with this post. (Oh, and Cam, get that eye of yours off the web! T.M.I. !!! :)

However, the other comment to make is that I've not yet seen too much discussion about Billy G's humanitarian work. It seems the tech community's missed the big picture, and that's fact that an entire generation in Africa is being wiped out by HIV/AIDS.

This might be a plug, but I've started supporting Watoto, which provides homes and a future for ophaned children in Uganda. What struck me was a statistic from Watoto that every day, the equivalent of 20 jumbo jets worth of people die in Africa, and it barely rates a mention. Not enough oil over there to worry about, maybe? So at least from the macro perspective, Gates has his priorities right.

Inside Googleplex Sydney

Google launched its new Australian and New Zealand head office today, located in an office tower overlookig Sydney's Darling Harbour. In fact, it's seven floors below me in the Darling Park building, and just one floor below the Fairfax executive level. Now there's an interesting bit of trivia.

So aside from news about the long distance I traveled to the launch this morning, I also have these cameraphone pics, below. Couple of interesting things to note:

1. Google actually let us take photos. This activity is banned at HQ in Mountainview, Calif. I should know, cos a security guard busted me last July on my visit.

2. Check out the cool tractor beam! Geeks rejoice.

3. Federal IT minister Helen Coonan came to open the 'plex. That's pretty high praise in this country.

4. They have about 30 staff, 75% sales and 25% real engineers. They're hiring like crazy, and are boosting the engineering staff. Larry and Sergei themselves gave the OK to ramp up the Sydney operations. Local engineers are contributing to real code, not just localising Google products. In fact, Aussie engineers are responsible for 50% of the work that went into Google Maps.

5. Speaking of staff, this shot through the door into their off-limits work space gave me an insight into their plans.  It looked to me like there was room enough for many, many more people. They have a lease on the whole floor, which by my guess can hold 200+, judging by the AFR's space.

Here's a few more random shots, including the requisite pool table and kitchen that supplies Googlers with free food every day:

Making Ballmer angry

Have you ever wondered what makes Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer angry? I found out on Tuesday when I had another opportunity to interview Ballmer again (we met twice when I was at InfoWorld in San Francisco).

Today I got a copy of the speech he made to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia on Tuesday shortly after our interview. At one point he states,

"Now I get asked sometimes – are you a mature company?  I hate that question.  There’s no worse question in the world because it sort of implies that there’s nothing left to do.  No innovation that’s necessary."

Ah, now that would explain why my line of questioning about Microsoft's maturity and declining revenue growth (on a percentage basis) elicited such a combative response. The story (sub req.) made page 1 of the Fin today and I wore out my fingers transcribing the interview that ran in features on p 60 (but doesn't seem to be online, grr).

Microsoft: Chew on RSS while-u-wait for Longhorn

Big news from Microsoft, for all you RSS and blog devotees: Microsoft's lifting its support of RSS up a significant notch. This from a good read in Business Week:

Before Microsoft brings out the new technology with Longhorn, it'll make RSS feeds readable from inside its widely used Internet Explorer browser. Right now, users typically have to cut-and-paste Web addresses into RSS readers to subscribe to services. RSS subscribers will be able to read those feeds in a test version of the new browser, available later this summer.

ps. It's Sunday and I'm taking a quick lunch break while working at the office on Monday's paper - yes, someone's gotta get this thing out for you. Upside: The phones don't ring and you can be surprisingly productive. Downside: It's Sunday. And I'm being teased by my view of Darling Harbour and the Balmain peninsula from the 25th floor.