But even your example can be viewed as an unavoidable cost of doing business where the alternative is to not be in business. In other words there's a distinctio

But even your example can be viewed as an unavoidable cost of doing business where the alternative is to not be in business. In other words there's a distinction to be made between regulatory compliance where you have no choice and automating payroll processing where you do have a choice. I think it's pretty clear we're talking about the latter and I would not categorize an internal software development team who's job is to make the business run more efficiently as a cost center, even though there's not external sales of their work products.