Taxing virtual assets
 

I was wandering about the internet this afternoon and happened across an article on G4 about how the government is looking into taxing online gaming assets (don't have the link here, G4 is blocked at work). So I looked around a bit and came across this and I thought to myself WTF!?

If this happens I may have to move to a third world country and join the starving masses to avoid being taxed for my gaming accounts.

Also if anyone can post the G4 article it would be cool, otherwise I will when I get out of work.

I'll admit that I only skimmed the article, but it looks like it's largely speculative. Something they COULD do, and something that you may technically already have to report.

that and what is the date of that article? jan feb 06 is the date n the website, but most of the data seems to be dated in 2003

The basis for taxing them would be the fact that you can sell the virtual items in eBay for real money. However that is not allowed by virtually all online communities/games/RPGs. So it doesn't seem to me that the IRS would have much of a leg to stand on.

They would have to take tax from income of the company that sells the online gaming service. This will result in most of online games being registered for companies base din nations that do not have that tax yet:rolleyes:

If the government *can* tax it, it's as good as taxed.

You are taxed for DYING in this country, what do you expect?

And our founding fathers revolted over a little tea tax....

It will not be dead, but it will be out of this country. People run from taxes and it is very easy to "move" an online game to a non-taxing nation.

Nah, they revolted over the whole "Taxation without representation" thing, the tea tax just pissed them off. Y'know those proper gents can't live without their tea.

Wait, they actually have a death tax? Ick.

Its a tax on the estate of the person who died. Kind of like the tax on gifts but the person that gave the gift is dead.

The IRS can and will tax any viable source of income. They don't care if its illegal, or non-physical, as long as they can put monatary value on it they'll try to take their share.

Yeah, and the estate tax only applies to people whose estate is worth more than $2,000,000. So stop acting all outraged: that's a huge amount of income, even divided amongst a couple people, and it would be non-sensical if taxes weren't paid on it.

(http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/...108143,00.html - Just a little proof about the $2,000,000 thing.)