MacRaven - Dave Haxton's Weblog

Tue, 17 Jan 2006

Uh, hello?

"On April 15, 2004, I will truthfully report to the IRS that my primary source of income is the sale of imaginary goods," [Julian] Dibbell wrote on his blog at the time, "and that I earn more from it, on a monthly basis, than I have ever earned as a professional writer."

Allow me to be the first to point out that Mr. Dibbell has always, as a professional writer, been engaged in selling imaginary goods. What is a novel? And why does it cost more than blank paper?

I just don't see an issue here.

The weapons, armor and gold pieces from online games are worth millions in real dollars. How much of a share will the IRS want?

(link) [CNET News.com]

/Politics | 1 writeback | permanent link

On 1/17/2006 09:59:03
Starlight Bunnybutt wrote

Ok, there are a few problems here, first and most tricky of all, not all the online gamers are in the US. Second is, if you never intend to sell these "assets" and thereby make real money off of them, they can't really be assets. Would the IRS have to go to each account and watch the activity to see if the person is just "farming gold" for fun or to sell later? If you won a rare item in a 'drop', would you have to pay more than someone who sold all their rare items and blew all the resulting gold on skills? And wouldn't this unfairly tax those players who were lucky over those poor sods who can't get a rare or ultrarae to save their lives? Also, this will not stop "gold farmers" from hiding their assets, as most use multiple accounts and credit cards to launder the money so that the IRS and the game aren't any wiser. Yeah, I play World of Warcraft, and I'm just coming into my own at level 38 with about 60 gold. I'd hate to pay real money on those imaginary coins, especially since I didn't make any real money this year. People are crazy.

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MacRaven
Dave Haxton's Weblog
Musings, Reflections, Rants and Comments from a Hoosier Heathen husband, father, grandfather, farmer and software engineer. There's really only one of me ...

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