Comments on: Taxing Your Fantasy Assets http://file770.com/?p=768 news of science fiction fandom Sat, 25 May 2013 23:27:59 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Mike http://file770.com/?p=768&cpage=1#comment-13726 Mike Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:27:31 +0000 http://file770.com/?p=768#comment-13726 Anyone sufficiently interested can download a PDF of this segment of the 2008 Taxpayer Advocate’s Report, and read the multi-page discussion beginning at internal page 214.

The lack of technical tax merit to the issue is evident from the fact that one of the subheads near the end is: “IRS guidance could improve taxpayer compliance even if it simply clarified that inworld transactions are not taxable.”

Who needs the clarification? I’m pretty confident no gamer would contemplate paying tax on any game transaction unless and until it was cashed out in real money. The article’s many footnotes hint that the only people needing IRS guidance are the writers for tax journals who stirred up the question in the first place.

]]> By: trintiy http://file770.com/?p=768&cpage=1#comment-13711 trintiy Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:05:00 +0000 http://file770.com/?p=768#comment-13711 Interesting fact. If $1 billion exchanged hands, that means there are bank records somewhere showing that money was deposited for those goods and services. Hence, the the funds “Should” be reported as income and I think the next logical steps are obvious from that point. Unless the people accepting payment for these services are doing something interesting to hide the money from the government, I don’t think the IRS has anything to worry about in terms of the monies they are collecting for these sources of income. I mean, I do privet consulting on the side for some companies, and no matter how they pay me the money goes into a bank account here in the US. Therefore, unless I’m really stupid and want to run my chances, I report it as income.

I guess I’m just not motivated enough to hide my money from the government. Alas, I’m a product of my generation: too lazy care, to apathetic to change, a slave to the man because it takes too much energy to rebel.

But if the man starts taking silver for every kill a person racks up on a Blizzard WarCraft server…(in some bizarre Twilight Zone reality) they may just wake the sleeping giant. That might actually make a great script to a movie. :-)

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