Slashdot Mirror
When Tax Day Comes to Azeroth
1up is running a short piece originally from Games For Windows: The Official Magazine. It discusses the inevitability of taxation coming to virtual worlds, and a little bit about what that might mean in the indeterminate future: "Taxable income includes everything from tangibles like cookies to more ephemeral and subjective things like works of art, concert tickets, or advice. Those big, scary books that most sane people pay accountants to understand for them don't really narrow down what counts as taxable income so much as meticulously define it as damn near any piece of matter, energy, or information that should happen to pass into your possession over the course of the year. That goofy World of WarCraft gnome that GFW editor-in-chief Jeff Green's been leveling isn't any more intangible than, say, stocks."
Well that is SO stupid. It boggles my mind to think that you can't even have a marginal source of income, that's calculated precisely so that you end up working for $1.50 an hour - if that - without getting taxed.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Is it legal to tax me on things I don't own? According to the EULA for WoW, I don't own the character, the items, the gold, or anything at all. Blizzard owns all of it.
So if I don't own it, how can I be taxed on it?