Sim-1040
From today's Washington Post, believe it or not:
Virtual economies attract real-world tax attention
Users of online worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft transact millions of dollars worth of virtual goods and services every day, and these virtual economies are beginning to draw the attention of real-world authorities.
"Right now we're at the preliminary stages of looking at the issue and what kind of public policy questions virtual economies raise -- taxes, barter exchanges, property and wealth," said Dan Miller, senior economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress.
"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," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.
gregmankiw.blogspot.com
Some of the comments
happyjuggler0 said...
This gives me an idea. Any game developers out there? I suggest a new game called Sim Senator.
You play the Senator, who gains points for years in office, as well as by passing pointless legislation, speechifying mindlessly to constituents, getting on tv, getting on powerful rent seeking committees, holding demagogic hearings, getting campaign contributions from sleazy lobbyists---the sleazier the better, leaking critical national secrets to the mainstream media, getting away with sex scandals, bribes etc.
The game developers need only some common sense, read some public choice theory, and follow the news for ideas.
12:03 PM
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Anonymous said...
The concept of taxing virtual economies strikes me as bizarre. First, the game developers themselves, to the extent they are profitable, are taxed in the real world and their employees pay taxes on their employment income. Second, anyone who is capable of converting virtual resources into real world assets (say by developping characters in World of Warcraft and selling them on eBay) is earning real world income and, at least by law, should be paying taxes on that income. Third, if you think of taxes as a collective political bargain for the services (enforcement of property rights, etc.) that the government provides, what services is the real world government providing in the virtual world? The "government" in the virtual world should be the one taxing participants, and it does. The game developper charges for access.
3:51 PM
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Chesapean said...
...Instead of becoming overheated in our imaginations because the new game is "virtual," it seems to me that reaction should focus on politicians' eagerness to devise new taxes... |
