A company produces some new tax software to meet the requirements of new tax laws. The timeline is short and there are still bugs in the software that are likely to take some time to fix, but the CEO strongly believes that the first company in the market with the new software for the new laws will get the biggest share of sales. Despite knowing about the bugs the CEO decides to launch the software and orders a big ad campaign. It adds a disclaimer to the software CD version 1.0, but the boss refuses to put a more explicit warning. Unfortunately a lot of users who use it file incorrect tax return and ATO (Australian Tax Office) issues them with big fines.
Now using the following three ethical theories:
• Relativism
• Utilitarianism
• Deontology
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The ethical dilemma presented here revolves around a piece of software developed to aid users in preparation of tax returns. The software has faults known to the developer prior to the time of its release which cause tax returns to be incorrectly compiled and submitted (at least in some cases). Whilst the software company has added a general disclaimer to the software, these faults have not been made explicit to the end user. This has resulted in many users of the software receiving fines from the taxation office due to the lodgment of incorrect tax returns.
The stakeholders in this situation are:
• the software company;
• the CEO of the software company;
• the end users of the software product;
• the tax office.
Addition ...