Congress takes an interest...

[Bricklayer]

Re: Congress takes an interest...

Of course not, he's a moronic tool

Yep, he and all those other Yale history grads...


Back to virtual economies... If a game were set up wherein virtual currency actually "belonged" to the player, and virtual currency could be sold freely, then "income" based on sales of virtual currency could probably be taxed. Hey, if they want to tax my gil (I know it's not really mine), I'll be happy to give them a portion of my sales/income in gil. Much luck to them trying to find any use for it!

This is an interesting topic, actually. But, going back to Bush again, I don't think he has much to do with it, as the question of taxing virtual economies and commerce has little-to-no likelyhood of being answered within the term of his precidency.

Edit: Ok, went back to find more info, and this article at Scientific American seemed much more insightful. I think my favorite line is:

"You could argue that to a certain degree the law has fallen (behind) because you can have a virtual asset and virtual capital gains, but there's no mechanism by which you're taxed on this stuff." -Dan Miller, senior economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress

Again, if the government wants to assess virtual taxes on "virtual assets", I say go for it.

[Dadelon]

Re: Congress takes an interest...

Its just like taxing you for breathing air.[/quote]




Don't give 'em any ideas!

[Cybilcora]

Re: Congress takes an interest...

Ok to explain what I think that the IRS and government is thinking let's look at it like this.

Take gambling at a casino. You hand a teller your money and they give you tokens or chips or a card with casino credits that represent your money given to them.

If you play and win 500 dollars worth in credits/tokens/chips, and leave the casino with their form of currency, it still has its monetery value if redemed later. However it has no use outside of the Casino.

If you trade in the credit/tokens/chips for real money, over a certain amount that you win you then have to pay taxes on your winnings.

If you sell your ingame currency (no real world use) for Real money (has real world use) you have to pay someone for the money you "earned" without working and paying Federal and state taxes on. Since if you had a job earning money that is where part of your earnings go.

Technically the US can tax for RMT for gil or character selling to any one in the world. If it's sold to some one in the US from a person outside the US they can slap it with a Import Tax or Value-Added Tax (VAT) which the Buyer must pay.

Sold by someone in the US they could tax it just like they tax Casino winnings(which the seller must pay).

Either way I look at it as being a good hinderance to people selling/buying data in a game.

But put taxes on the currency INSIDE thte game inself and what whatever you buy in the game, then that tells me the Government doesn't have a clue >.<;

whatever I think it will take several years for this to go some where.

[Sabaron]

Re: Congress takes an interest...

Even in that case it's not really taxable with respect to most games. RMT sales are technically Breach of Contract for most MMORPGs. Therefore, any items sold for real money are something like contraband. You can't tax illegal activites because you're not supposed to engage in them in the first place. The only thing you could do would be to sue for BoC. This would be similar to placing an 8% sales tax on Cocaine...

[Cybilcora]

Re: Congress takes an interest...

Yes that is extremely true, but what I was stating was a possible Government justification of when they "took an interest in" MMORPG's. Just one way to look at it.

However you hit the nose on the very head; hasn't the government tried to do this sort of thing before? "8% sales tax on" some form of Illegal drug?

I came across this and found ammusing.

http://www.tennessean.com/government...nt_ID=63433882

and the age old question. Should the Government Tax Marijuana?

http://economics.about.com/od/income.../marijuana.htm

[Sabaron]

Re: Congress takes an interest...

OMG, I almost gave myself a hernia from laughing so hard... "Legal Nitwittery"

Drug dealers can go to any of the state revenue offices within 48 hours of coming into possession of unauthorized substances. They pay the tax and get a ''stamp'' to put on the drugs showing they have paid up. They would not be required to give their name, address, Social Security number or other identifying information. State tax collectors would be constrained by taxpayer privacy laws from reporting them to police. Still, state officials say voluntary payment is unlikely to happen often.

When Congress first tried to make Marijuana illegal, it was very unpopular. They hadn't had enough time to crank the propaganda machine and , in 1937, they had only just repealed the 18th amendment so people were of the mind that the government no longer had the authority to restrict or control substances (many states had already made the substance illegal during prohibition). The Federal government, rather than outright banning the substance, instead created a tax law whereby someone selling Marijuana would need a stamp placed on the product to verify that they paid the tax on it. The government then refused to issue stamps thus, all marijuana was contraband. The scheduling came later after it had been well established that MJ was illegal and indoctrination had garnered significant public support. In the 80's, pharmaceutical companies became the only legal United States pot dealers when they allowed Marinol to be produced and distributed legally (Marinol is a product of Solvay Pharmaceuticals). I think the history of the criminalization of Cocaine is also quite interesting and has a very anti-racial (specifically against Southern Blacks) bend to it (some parts of MJ have anti-racial overtones toward immigrant Mexicans).

I'm not saying that I think any particular currently illicit substance is either (a) non-harmful or (b) good for you--in fact it may be quite the opposite. As my grandmother says (wrt Marijuana), "Why would you want to escape reality, when God has made it such a beautiful place?" I just see a lot of weird and unreasonable structures in the law--many of which can be traced or tied to lobby groups that have no moral interest in the law but rather a business interest--the Cotton and Tobacco industries are linked in with the criminalization of Marijuana for instance because the non-psychoactive form of the plant is much easier and faster to grow than cotton--it's widespread production in the US would create huge amounts of competition for the relatively small (by comparison) cotton industry. When you take a look at government control of our daily lives, you find that the US government only rarely unmakes law. They spend all year making laws. Every time the government makes a law, every American becomes less free. Laws don't make you free and they don't always make you safer. Every year, you become less free and you feel more safe, but you pay more in freedom than you receive in safety and eventually, you'll have neither.

[Sabaron]

Re: Congress takes an interest...

I would like to add that while I love Industrial Hemp as a product (and the aforementioned Grandmother does as well--they're farmers), I'm a bit more leery of making the recreational form of the product legal as there is currently no way to determine a person's current level of intoxication, and I definitely don't want to see countless numbers of stoned citizenry driving around crashing into people and causing more intoxicant related fatalities. If there were a method by which one could measure marijuana intoxication and not just whether or not a person had used the substance within the past X days, I would be more receptive to the idea--not that I would have been in favor of making it illegal in the first place (were I around back then), but since it's already illegal, there are certain issues that we should address before reintroducing it as a widely-usable intoxicant like alcohol. I am also not in favor of jailing people who are not found to be using the product while operating heavy machinery (e.g. at-home drug busts, property seizures, and the arrest of users who are not driving under the influence).

[Cybilcora]

Re: Congress takes an interest...

Yah. In the case of drugs it all just boils down to we need someone to protect us from ourselves.

But with the Government getting tax hungry and looking to Tax the gaming industry your 180% correct, the government cannot tax something that is in Breach of Contract with SE. SE needs to go to the thet sources and stop the web pages that sell gil and characters. Why is Ebay taking part in a activitiy that is breakng a contract with a Major gaming company? Why is IGe website not turning up 404?

Nothing I can do but sit back and wonder.

[Cybilcora]

Re: Congress takes an interest...

I would like to add that while I love Industrial Hemp as a product (and the aforementioned Grandmother does as well--they're farmers),

Yah hemp as a woven fabric is AMAZING stuff. Strong and durable.

Gotten way off topic here >.< ok I stop now.