IRS looking for ways to tax MMOs

Posted Oct 16, 2006 at 10:43PM EST by QJ Staff

Listed in: Titles, News Tags: IRS, Linden

In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes; and maybe that's one of the reasons why the IRS is paying more attention to MMORPGs nowadays. The success of MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, Second Life, and Guild Wars among many others, was one of the reasons why a congressional Joint Economic Committee is looking at possible ways for the Internal Revenue Service to get involved in the virtual life business.

Although this isn't the first time that MMOs faced this issue, this latest inquiry originated from senior economist Dan Miller, who also happens to be affiliated with the mentioned economic committee. Taxing real money from MMOs sprouted from his head while he was passing the time away playing a particular MMORPG. He mentions that "right now we're at the preliminary stages of looking at the issue and what kind of public policy questions virtual economies raiseÂ—taxes, barter exchanges, property and wealth." With that, we should just hope that they get stuck in the preliminary stages.

That's why it isn't surprising for MMOs like Second Life to be under the microscope. The game has it's own economy with the Linden Dollars (L$) as their official currency - Linden bucks could easily be converted to real US dollars, and it won't be surprising if users would choose to earn some real dough through their virtual activities.

Some game devs have accepted the fact that taxation is looming in the horizons. Star Wars Galaxies developer Sam Lewis shares that "ownership, property rights, all that stuff needs to be decided. There's just too much money floating around...The tax laws don't know how to behave because these are virtual items: ones and zeros on a database we're allowing you to play in." Well what can we say, death and taxes - there's never any convenient time for either one of them.

Via Ars Technica

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IRS looking for ways to tax MMOs

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