5:59 PM
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Gamer taxes. RMAH sales. Making Money Gaming. This is it folks. The fun is winding down. Well, kinda. Real life is setting in. Anytime you make money, the IRS and the government wants a piece of the pie.....
As I was writing a post a few minutes ago, I got a DM that surprised me. Okay, not really a surprise, but a reality check. Taxable Income to be precise. The email tossed me a link to a very informative page: Centre Tech Law Blog
Here's a few clips of the post there:
"We’ve reported before on how technology oftentimes outpaces the law. But for the millions of people currently playing Diablo III™, Activision’s and Blizzard’s newest release, the opposite has occurred. Here we have older income tax laws catching up to technology in new, unexpected ways." Click here to read the full article
"The best example for players might be the IRS’ treatment of PayPal and Ebay sales, which have to be reported by sellers only if they earn more than $20,000 and conduct more than 200 transactions per year." Click here to read the full article
"So, what’s next? The transactions fees on the RMAH are making Blizzard a lot of money, so I would wager that this game mechanism is here to stay, and we’ll see it emulated on other platforms in the future." Click here to read the full article
Highly interesting. As for now, I am currently not under radar. But you never know, IRS is normally due for an audit, and.....you just never know. At the very least I might get a cool shirt.
Alto.
1 comments:
I think there are several other avenues the IRS could take with this from my experience with Microstock photography sites. As a UK person, I have to sign various forms which basically state that I am making use of the International Tax Treaty & declaring my earnings here. But there was a huge out cry & lots of confusion when it initially hit the microstock companies & contributors. Conflicting tax expert advice from the different sites etc. Since then, Zazzle & Cafepress (I believe) have also instigated a similar system which means I sign their tax forms before they will consider even paying out my earnings.
The most important thing now is to keep your own records just in case it does happen & for any non-US people - you can get hit with this too - so don't panic when it hits, it will be fairly straightforward to sort out. I personally think it is inevitable as the IRS has woken up to all the various ways that people make cash online & they want their share of it too :)
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