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The estimated payroll costs for Windows Vista are estimated to be 10B. Now consider the costs for every Windows version released since 1985, and include R&D/marketing expenses.

http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2003460386_b...

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But that's an operating system, not an application. You've got to give credit to the IRS spending more on one application than Microsoft spent on their OS.

OSes are not particularly complicated. I could imagine that tax laws require a lot more code (and tests) than dragging some windows around and scheduling processes. (Neither are easy, of course.)

That "one application" was software+hardware tasked with managing millions of hand-written paper forms. The electronic version of tax filing was far cheaper, and launched successfully.

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