IE10 & IE11 don't trigger touch events (e.g., touchstart). If you want to differentiate touches from clicks, you must use the pointer events API and the event object's pointerType property:

gistfile1.js

function onPointerDownHandler (event) {
  if (event.pointerType === 'touch') {
  	// Equivalent to a touchstart on MS Surface
  }
}

// For IE 10
element.addEventListener('MSPointerDown', onPointerDownHandler);

// For IE 11+
element.addEventListener('pointerdown', onPointerDownHandler);

MSDN docs on the change from IE10 to IE11 (i.e., dropping the vendor prefix):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn304886.aspx

General MSDN docs on Pointer Events:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh441233.aspx

It's also worth noting that peak IE10 use has already passed, and it's currently less popular than IEs 8, 9, or 11:
http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2&qpcustomd=0&qptimeframe=M

W3C candidate recommendation for pointer events:
http://www.w3.org/TR/pointerevents/

Cross-browser support for pointer events:
http://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer

And of course, a reminder that Chrome's developers are leaning towards supplementing the existing mouse and touch event APIs instead of implementing the pointer events API:
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=162757#c64

Chrome team has seen the light on Pointer API https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/ODWmcKNQl0I Safari and Firefox still dragging their feet