Menu
What's New
By:
Filters

BBC NEWS: Slapping a tax on playtime

Taxes

Xandra said:
Hi,

I'm rather sure most of us are living in areas where nearly all income is taxable anyway.

*snip*

Anyway, even now it should be theoretically taxable if we make a decent profit in a virtual world. Laws usually are aiming wide, and I'd not bet that a tax investigator finding the (imaginatory, unfortunately) 20K $$$ withdrawal from the selling of my (imaginatory, unfortunately) ModFAP wouldn't get very excited!
An (anonymous) ATM card would have hindered this, and this is why I think they're holding back - MA for sure doesn't want to annoy any authorities, given the tiny line they're walking in regard to "gambling" ...

So all that happens is that tax offices are now thinking of ways to make this more easy for their tax inspectors. Income generated in virtual RCE worlds will be taxed, you can be sure. And I cannot even be angry about:

Why should the guy that sunk 100K $/ EUR into EU to resell high end stuff should be tax-free, while I myself, that have sunk a multiple of $/ EUR into building a company, and creating quite some full time jobs, should pay the full tax - for him, too?

No way we'll avoid the tax, it's just a matter of time. And it's fair, too. Why should people that use new technology bolt holes have an advantage compared to, let's say, the business man that delivers you fresh bread & milk every morning? Would you like him to drown under massive tax pressure & create a tax free service of virtual wares in EU/ SL? Would you like to receive your bread & milk virtually, every morning when you log on? Enjoy your meal!

*snip
Click to expand...

Exactly!

James

(parts snipped to avoid repeating the enitre post - read it above, its worth the time)
 
It's gonna happen in due time. With the economies they way they are, and government always looking to take some of our money--it will happen. EU never made much noise for the American government but it is now :cool: .

The only thing I wonder about is which country gets to tax me? I mean the action is happening overseas. The only thing I do is deposit from my PC--so will they tax my deposits? Also I see it being hard for American IRS to regulate outside of the country--unless the government tries to force MA to allow them to track American transaction; which I don't see happening.

Well in American we should start to worry when congress implements the Internet tax. Because, all transaction are Internet/web sales out of state.
 
After due consideration, I've decided that should I ever think I have an earthly chance of earning money out of EU (rather than just having fun) then I'm moving to the Isle of Man, Jersey in the Channel Islands or any other tax haven.
 
If someone is making a living from online games, it's income as every other and thus can be taxed. The thing is that most ingame transactions, especially in EU, have nothing to do with earning for living this way and are just part of entertainment. It's exactly like you were playing poker with friends or Monopoly using RL money instead of some plastic coins and so on. And there is one more problem: if I withdraw, say 10k USD from online game (I wish I could lol) and tax office gets some kind of report that I did it, how are they able to say, that it's not the money I deposited before (thus using a game like just a wallet). I guess all these information should come from game administrator/developer. Because in other way it would mean that I need to keep books for every item/service I buy IRL and inform tax office always when I put a bank note in my wallet and everutime I take it out. And if I spend it, I would have to inform them what for... It's sick. Simply like this. I wish goverments stopped to think about such crap and started to think about their citizens, fighting back the poverty, improoving life standards, education and so on...
 
This is absolutely fabulous news.

Now I can deduct all the costs I encur as I further my Entropia investment.


Bones
 
Xandra said:
+REP goes to Commodore for a brilliant text that forced me to finally clean my monitor again.
Click to expand...

I'm glad not too many ppl took it seriously :silly2:

Yes I must say I agree widely with what you've posted, though I feel there are a few other problems to work through. What exactly happens to people that have money already deposited?

The real issue, is that trying to introduce a system 'after-the-fact' is usually rather painful and messy.

My take on the situation, is that I deposit (spend) money into Entropia. I'm paying MA for a service, the service they provide is access to credit (not money) within Entropia Universe. I then have peds on my card, irrespective of ped location - card or tied up in items, the ped has no intrinsic real world value. If I elect to withdraw peds from EU, MA is agreeing to exchange ingame credits for real cash, that they transfer to me. They're not paying me an 'income' simply returning to me a some of money that represents unused credits that were previously bought.

If I do well within the Entropia universe, and endup having a ped card/item balance of a greater ped value than I had from depositing. When I come to withdraw the ped, I'm not making an income. I'm still only converting unused ped to money.

Taking the point of tax itself, I'm not wholly against. One of my other main hobbies is motorcycling, and I certainly pay tax to do that! However to justify such a tax in virtual worlds, I think the governments should also have to step into provide a service to the gaming community. Ensuring full nationwide broadband roll-out, getting serious fiber-optic trunk throught the majority of the country, pref. to new build houses and business. Ensuring that the best links are available internationally. Following though legislation on businesses that use email spam, etc.

Tax is paid to the country you live within, so there is no issue of 'I live in Europe, what about American tax' that's an issue for the countries foreign and banking ministers to wrangle. Entropia money is European anyway, it's only considered $ for the concept of 10:1 conversion. For non-Americans, we benefit/loose on market fluctuations but it's not the reality of where the cash lives, to my knowledge it's all Euros (Or maybe Jan prefers to use gold bullion as play bricks :laugh: ).

Tbh I think it's more about the tax man wanting us all to legally have to invite him to our birthday parties, so that on the rare occasion when the cake looks big and chocolatey with cherries on top, he'll be able to get a slice.
 
It will never happen, period.

The entire thing is privately owned: the internet is payed by the company, the development and developers are payed by the company and so forth. Theres no room for a government foot to step in.
 
Tax Exemption Number: 1032574

I am exempt from all taxes, foreign and domestic, and request a full refund of any taxes levied, as well as a disbursment for taxes levied at a rate of 2.25:1

~I
 
Slap the tax, the only thing that needs to be slapped is our queen.
 
Last edited:
The article is a bit missleading. According to tax laws in Sweden they do NOT tax ingame transactions. However when you withdraw money it is taxable as long as the withdrawel is greater than the deposit. This means that only a few big players will ever get upp to the sums (10000 SEK/year) neccesary to levy tax on it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top