Semantics or not, anyone other than government must call it something other than a tax... as anything that is collected as a tax must be handed to the government.  That is a fact... and if the government wanted to take Kogan to task over it the government would win.

Even the Brisbane City Council, Australia's largest, cannot impose taxes.  It can levy rates and impose parking fines to raise revenue... but it CANNOT levy taxes.

Yes, [apart from the nasty sting to the back pocket] tax is just a word, but it is a word, when imposing a charge, that only governments [state and federal] are entitled by law to use.

I see this is taxing your brain...

I gotta agree there.

Semantics are a pretty big fucking deal when it comes to the law.

They need to change the name to a surcharge, and make it approximately equivalent to recovering costs.

what... so... older than ie 7 is fine?

Yes. As a paper weight. 

You don't know the half of it.  At 5 something in the morning it was a major effort to string all them word t'gether

And now it's 7.45 in the morning and I still haven't been to bed...2 days in a row now.  Yup, just about running on empty.

Yeah, like when I asked the cop if he'd arrest me for calling him a fucken dirty low down pig.

He answered in the affirmative, so I asked: Well could you arrest me for thinking it?"

"No!", he replied, so I piped up and said: "Well in that case, I think you're a fucken dirty low down.... "

Yup, though you wouldn't believe unless you saw it for yourself, but there are a few descendents of Moses who are still using Papyrus 6.

which just highlights what a load of rubbish this stunt is. at least make it consistent.

Yeah, it's a ridiculous stunt alright, but it sure serves the site owner with free [international] publicity.  I mean, here we are talking about it on a multi-national forum... not that I'd be tempted to frequent his establishment/purchase his wares.  For mine, this is a slippery proposition geared towards profiteering. 

The site is his store, and effectively he's requiring some patrons to contribute to it's maintenance, something customers of a 'brick and mortar' store would not tolerate. I can see it now, various stores charging an entry fee to cover cleaning and repair costs.  Yup, people would be inclined to shop elsewhere/stay away in droves.

Come to think of it, which I do, I have a copy of IE7 tucked away somewhere in my archives.  Maybe I could charge a rendering fee to those sites who don't play fairly with it.

You might... if your name was Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer. But if you were, you wouldn't need to do that... another Catch 22, eh old mate?

Yeah, but I was just being facetious, Doc.  I could never be so arrogant, or greedy to think of such a ridiculous charge.

I'm a firm believer of acquiring only that which one is entitled to... and that would exclude payments from bogus charges.

Its not a bogus charge, IE7 is a mess and supporting it costs them extra.

I was actually referring to my own, tongue-in-cheek comment: re, charging sites for not being IE7 friendly.

Still, Kogan is a twenty something who became a multi-millionaire in like under 5 years, and I am sure he could absorb the very miniscule cost [in comparison to his income/bank balance] to show customers good faith... that even multi-millionaires are human and have a heart.  However, that was not the purpose of this exercise, regardless of how bad IE7 is.  No, given the very small number of Aussies using IE7, and that many of those are likely to never visit his site, it was more about the free publicity garnered worldwide.... I mean the majority of WWW users [even here in Oz] have progressed to the safer IE10 or Firefox 11, so why is it even relevant, much less news?

he doesn't have to support ie7. leave it broken for those with dodgy browsers with a massive banner saying they won't work would do the trick.

heck.. he can even do a multiple choice screen of "pick your browser" with the answer going on the receipt.

You have never been to a store that charges extra if you pay via credit card to recover the extra money it costs them to offer that service?

Or used a vending machine with credit card (again, costs extra).

Or paid a utility, school, or doctor bill with debit/bank draft rather then credit card due to it being less money (to recover their extra cost from credit acceptance)?