ATO wants to change how foreign software is taxed

I tried writing about US tech companies pissed off with our ATO yesterday but the words I generated sucked. This from The Crux, Justin Warren's weekly tech newsletter, is much better: "The Australian Tax Office is trying to change its tax rules for software, which is putting noses out of joint at SaaS vendors and the US Treasury. The ATO appears to think paying to use SaaS might be a 'payment for the use of intellectual property' which is a royalty and therefore subject to royalty withholding tax. Royalty withholding tax is only 5% but on the kinds of transaction volumes concerned, it adds up to a lot of money. I can't see a colonial outpost prevailing over the imperial core. Not for long, anyway".