Virtual Taxation Without Virtual Representation!

[brynndragon]

When I first heard about this I assumed it was a hoax, like the congress taxing e-mail thing. But I trust the Washington Post to do their homework: Congress ponders virtual taxation of virtual economies. As a side note, they've already got the interaction between real-world and virtual economies figured out - you treat the virtual economy aspect as good-or-service and thus only need to follow the real-world money.

As an aside, I keep wondering if I should do the Second Life thing. Part of me says, "One life should be enough for any person, if it isn't then you're doing something wrong." Another part of me says, "Dude, NPR played an interview with Kurt Vonnegut recorded live in a Second Life studio and Reuters is taking it seriously too. Maybe it's worth checking out." I'm still pondering it.

EDIT: I was trying to say that they already have a system in place to deal with real-world economic interactions of virtual economies (you treat the exchange of real money for virtual money/goods just like any other sale that involves bytes rather than physical goods - in other words you treat it just like a physical good being sold to someone ;P), so they don't need to figure that out. Although they might decide to treat that interaction in some other fashion (I hope not, taxes are complex enough as it is). As for me, all I want is something to stop people from mailing virtual spam about giving them real-world money for virtual goods/money to my virtual mailbox in World of Warcraft comma dammit.

Comments

[damhan-alluidh.livejournal.com]

Sticky, since a lot of their customers aren't american citizens. (Ahem)

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

Yea, Americans are far from a majority in MMORPGs - last I checked there are more hardcore gamers[1] in Korea than here (and by "here" I mean "the entire North American continent"). I imagine "figuring out who is American" is entirely subsumed into "figuring out who owes us money, real or virtual", though.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

mmm...virtual tariffs...