Not sure what to say here except: TRANSLATION WANTED!

It says that the U.S. government is trying to figure out a way to tax virtual online winnings and holdings (aka plat and items as on EQ) and that if you had a large, very large holding like a million plat or some such that it could be taxable in the near future if you die and will the account to a heir or other person ...so folks it means that sometime in the future we are going to have to pay for the game ...pay taxes on that purchase ...then pay a online fee to play ...and if you get good enough at your chosen game to have a large holding (even tho it is virtual mind you ) then the government is going to tax you on your virtual holding as if they are real .

God sometimes you just have to wonder what the Government is smoking lol

Grindle
 
I didn't read the article cause well... It lost my interest by the first few sentences. But... that just... doesn't seem right! Maybe when I stop being lazy I'll read the article to see for myself. :shrug: In the mean time I'll just be glad I'm one of the poor ones in game, hahaha.

PS: Does that mean guilds would have to tax their guildies for guild bank monies too? :what: :psyduck:
 
the only way they could tax a game like that is as an income tax when you convert your assets into RL money.

It is retarded and will never happen with actual taxes in game.
 
Only games, such as Project Entropia or Second Life, that actually does exchanging of RL and game funding have such records to report. There'll of course be individuals who'll use venues like playerauctions.com that aren't required to report sellers' transactions to the IRS. I'm not aware how the IRS currently taxes those who make their earning from doing ebay sales report it. Does ebay submit records to them or the sellers? I would think mainly those who have large sale volume or big ticket items. People are cheating ebay and selling things for less, then make the buyer pay the rest in form of over inflated "shipping and handling". I'm surprise I didn't see any PS3 sell for under $100 but had like near $2000 in shipping and handling. LAFF
 
I seriously doubt this will ever affect the average gamer.
If your RL job is to trade items/pp/characters, id be more worried.

As a side note to give some perspective:
In 2001 some economy guy did a some calculations based on trades done in EverQuest.
Back then Norrath had a average daily population of 60.000 people,
the money exchange rate on pp was 0.0107,
and the average citizen would have a GNP /year at 2.260 US-dollars /year.
-That was a better GNP for each citizen than Russia had that year..
Everquests total ingame economy that year would been about the same as Lebanon's RL economy..
 
I played the one year between SoL release and prior to PoP. My "perspective" yielded me 1600 USD from sales of "time and effort" into my modestly geared and 60 AA wiz 59 and 150k pp. It basically was minimum wage while I was having fun. :toot:
 
Tryfaen said:
the only way they could tax a game like that is as an income tax when you convert your assets into RL money.

It is retarded and will never happen with actual taxes in game.
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That's because game publishers may well in the not-too-distant future have to send the forms--which individuals receive when earning nonemployee income from companies or institutions--to virtual world players engaging in transactions for valuable items like Ultima Online castles, the Game weapons or Second Life currency, even when those players don't convert the assets into cash.
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But I see a flaw in this article:
LaPiana said that there is little question that the transfer of such assets could be taxable, since it is property. However, he did say that the taxes would accrue only if the total value of the estate's assets, at the time of death, exceeded the limit set by the state in which the deceased had lived. In most cases, he said, that amount is $2 million, though some states, like New York and New Jersey, have lower limits.
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The reason you're now allowed to sell in-game items and such are because you don't actually own those assets, according to Blizzard and SOE. If ownership was actually transfered over to the players, I don't quite get how they'd be able to remove the items from you.
 
Homogenn said:
But I see a flaw in this article:
The reason you're now allowed to sell in-game items and such are because you don't actually own those assets, according to Blizzard and the Company. If ownership was actually transfered over to the players, I don't quite get how they'd be able to remove the items from you.
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Didnt SoE and Blizzard both loose lawsuits about this? -you Are allowed to sell currency from WoW outside WoW, but not to advertise about it ingame. SoE tried to intrododuce their Station Exchange to control it somewhat.
 
They can ban for whatever reason they want, they don't need to have court backing for that. Their sandbox, their rules. ;)
 
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