Full Version: Taxing virtual income
I read this article this morning and I was a bit surprised:
IRS taxation of online game virtual assets inevitable
I know at least a few members of
are or have been MMORPG gamers.
Should the IRS tax virtual income?
Should the government ever tax any unrealized income?
IRS taxation of online game virtual assets inevitable
QUOTE
If you are a hard-core player of virtual worlds like World of Warcraft, Second Life, EverQuest or There, IRS form 1099 may someday soon take on a new meaning for you.
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, EverQuest weapons or Second Life currency, even when those players don't convert the assets into cash.
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, EverQuest weapons or Second Life currency, even when those players don't convert the assets into cash.
I know at least a few members of
are or have been MMORPG gamers.Should the IRS tax virtual income?
Should the government ever tax any unrealized income?
It doesn't surprise me one bit that the IRS would attempt to tax this. The solution seems incredibly simple. Taxation on virtual assets will be paid with virtual income. You kill a monster online, send the IRS 20% of your virtual booty. Congress should be well versed in this scenario--it is, after all, exactly how they are funding the SS Trust Fund.
Question...wouldn't Monopoly fall into this same category? We've been playing that for decades. I think any attempt to actually collect monies from these activities will ultimately fail miserably.
Question...wouldn't Monopoly fall into this same category? We've been playing that for decades. I think any attempt to actually collect monies from these activities will ultimately fail miserably.
All those years of Mario and Sonic are going to catch up with me now 
I really don’t understand this. If they are talking about in game stuff, I don’t see how you could pass this, if they are talking about the fact that real currency does play a role in many online games, such as selling accounts on ebay, then I can see where they are coming from. As a gamer, and an online gamer I know that such can actually make a pretty penny for many people, and that people in the world, not just America play those games in order to get stuff to sell for real cash, even something as simple as in game currency can be worth money in the real world. You can type in sentences pertaining to such in a search engine and come across such sites actually, I always thought it was kind of funny but the more I learned about such things the more I found that such games actually come to be a powerful force in the world, in a sense almost owning peoples lives actually, its a bit scary. PayPal has a lot to do with it, just like with a majority of online cash transactions overall. Just to make it more stable on my point of how powerful these games can be in regards to maybe addiction people have killed themselves because servers went down for a few hours.
Also believe it or not, many of the people that do such in order to sell for real cash do not hail from America.
Should the IRS tax virtual income?
In a strict sense of virtual money, or not real money or the greenback I don’t see how they could do such really.
Should the government ever tax any unrealized income?
Only at the point that it could start to become real cash as I described above overall could I see something like that ever becoming a reality.
I really don’t understand this. If they are talking about in game stuff, I don’t see how you could pass this, if they are talking about the fact that real currency does play a role in many online games, such as selling accounts on ebay, then I can see where they are coming from. As a gamer, and an online gamer I know that such can actually make a pretty penny for many people, and that people in the world, not just America play those games in order to get stuff to sell for real cash, even something as simple as in game currency can be worth money in the real world. You can type in sentences pertaining to such in a search engine and come across such sites actually, I always thought it was kind of funny but the more I learned about such things the more I found that such games actually come to be a powerful force in the world, in a sense almost owning peoples lives actually, its a bit scary. PayPal has a lot to do with it, just like with a majority of online cash transactions overall. Just to make it more stable on my point of how powerful these games can be in regards to maybe addiction people have killed themselves because servers went down for a few hours.
Also believe it or not, many of the people that do such in order to sell for real cash do not hail from America.
Should the IRS tax virtual income?
In a strict sense of virtual money, or not real money or the greenback I don’t see how they could do such really.
Should the government ever tax any unrealized income?
Only at the point that it could start to become real cash as I described above overall could I see something like that ever becoming a reality.
I don't see this happening. This ranks right up there with the tax on e-mails. We can't manage to do a good job taxing online sales let alone virtual economies. From a technical standpoint I don't believe this is feasible right now. There are too many technical problems and way too many questions that have to be answered before this becomes a real issue (if ever...).
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