IRS taxation of online game virtual assets inevitable

Evermore · Post by **Evermore** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 4:55 pm

this is fucking unbelieveable. god damn government thieves

What the fuck is next?

Narrock · Post by **Narrock** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 5:02 pm

...players' acquisition of virtual loot by, for example, killing monsters, creates taxable events.

HAHAHA OMG WTF??????????????

Evermore · Post by **Evermore** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 5:04 pm

is that fucking insane?

Narrock · Post by **Narrock** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 5:06 pm

Hell yeah it's insane! Damn, you'd think this was an Onion article or something. Holy crap!

Trielelvan · Post by **Trielelvan** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 5:15 pm

First up was William LaPiana, a wills, trusts and estates professor at New York Law School.
He approached the question by examining whether estate taxes would accrue on the transfer to an heir of a sizable collection of valuable virtual assets.

LaPiana said that there is little question that the transfer of such assets could be taxable, since it is property.

W.... T.... F.... ??????

Post by **Martrae** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 6:42 pm

Never happen.....all the game companies constantly tell players that it's their world and we don't actually own anything.

Post by **Arlos** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 6:57 pm

That's not entirely true, Mart. Look at Second Life, I believe it's called. They fully allow purchasing in-game resources with RL money. I just actually recently saw an article about someone who had just amassed enough virtual holdings in that game that were they to liquidate it into cash, they would be a RL millionaire.

http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/200 ... al_an.html for one from the game company
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/ ... es_fi.html for a businessweek article.

Methinks that a government trying to tax her virtual income would actually have a case, because by the rules of the online environment in which she operates, she DOES own all of the virtual property, and it CAN be legally converted into real life money. You'd have a similar argument on those EQ2 servers where SOE acts as ebay broker for similar in-game to RL cash transactions.

For games like WOW, however, the license agreement specifically states that Blizzard retains all rights to anything that resides in your account, and that you don't actually own anything except the license allowing you to access said content, and even then, it's revokable by Blizzard at any time. So, if the IRS tried to come after you for the value of your WOW account, they'd be pissing upwind, as you legally don't own anything on the account, and thus cannot be liable for its value.

-Arlos

Gargamellow · Post by **Gargamellow** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 10:12 pm

first they ban it

then they make money off it

welcome to the world

Yamori · Post by **Yamori** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 11:09 pm

I wish I could cast SPLURT and send Jobobtik on these people and watch them die. ;(

Then maybe sell their parts to ogre merchants TAX FREE
:hiphop:

Yamori · Post by **Yamori** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 11:17 pm

Arlos makes a great point too - 2nd Life and (maybe?) EQ2 are the only real direct virtual-to-real market exchanges that are large enough to be worth looking at. Almost all other virtual currencies belong to the companies themselves in legal terms and transactions are done under the table.

But more importantly, fuck those money grubbers. :-x

MMOs are one of the closest things you can get to an observable example model of an unregulated free market economy. It speaks volumes that (at its height) the EQ platinum was alledgedly worth more than the Yen. And WoW gold currently beats some real-world currencies. If for academic purposes if nothing else they should keep their sticky tentacles away.

Dylan · Post by **Dylan** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 11:18 pm

Bodin · Post by **Bodin** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 9:08 am

Going to have to pay $50 come tax time for my 2.0 GDit. Maybe I can leave it on a corpse before my audit.

Gargamellow · Post by **Gargamellow** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 10:54 am

mart is absoluitely right

if they are going to tax me on a fungi tunic that poofed due to a bug..i am going to sue sony for my fungi tunic..hypothetically speaking

never gonna happen