TAXATION IN MMO GAME TRADE Say Governments
TAXATION IN MMO GAME TRADE Say Governments
We love our MMORPGs. Chances are, you do too, or why would you be reading this? They're great. You can rise through the ranks by completing quests and tasks. Chat and chill with friends or just explore the lush environment that stretches for miles and miles. And what's best of all is that you can play the vast amount of them for free. Even if these is an option to pay (such as with RuneScape) you get 95% of the games content in the free version anyway.
That means you can try out a game and see if you like it or not. If you don't, you're not committed for the next month or so having paid a subscription fee and it's easy and quick without all that filling out of credit card forms and so on. Ah yes, free gaming gives you the best of both worlds.
Imagine if you were taxed for playing MMORPGs! Well it seems as though this may be coming into effect sometime in the near future. The Chinese government are preparing a plan whereby they will be taxing people cold hard cash simply to buy and sell virtual goods online. That's right, free MMO gaming is being targeted by the tax man.
Now, by its very nature, monitoring the economy of an MMO will be extremely difficult, let alone taxing the people for their sales and purchases within the game. There are two main area where by the governments are proposing they could tax people for their activities in the online virtual world.
The first is perhaps the most obvious when you give it a little thought. Every day, thousands of online characters are sold on online market places such as Ebay or simply bought on a private level between two people through paypal. This practice is mainly done on a small scale to earn gamers some cash when they get bored with one character and decide to move onto the next.
However, some gamers have begun operation whereby they create characters and systematically up their level in order to make a sale. This is done on a mass scale. Often with one person 'leveling-up' a dozen characters at a time. They are then put on Ebay and the highest bidder is given the characters username and password. Although this is strictly against the rules of the majority of MMOs, it is almost unstoppable given the their size of the internet and the probability that these sales will go largely unnoticed. These organizations are referred to as Gold Farms with their main customers being newcomers to the game who are unwilling to rise through the ranks of the game.
This is under taxation laws of most countries as any regular and or large source of income must be self-taxed by the individual responsible. However, these laws are rarely enforced. That said, countries such as Sweden and South Korea are looking into the matter and are currently developing a system that will make it a lot easier to tax these sellers.
The second area where these governments are planning to tax is on items sold actually in the game itself. That means that every time you buy a sword, armor or even some bread in an MMO, the person selling it may have to pay tax. However if these games are free, how will they tax you? One suggested theory is to charge your credit card. When you sign up for a game it will be initially free, however you'll have to hand over your credit card details in order to access the gameplay. Therefore, each time you sell something you will be charged a small amount of tax. Now because of how game economies fluctuate depending on how many people are online and by the availability of certain objects, that means that they may have to come up with an exchange rate system between actual currency and virtual currency.
This may also have devastating consequences for the MMOs themselves. It seems certain that if this taxation dose come in, many may be put-off playing MMOs altogether. But another startling possibility may come about. An online backlash to the taxing such as a cease to trade in online games could easily cripple the games structure and foundation leading to a giant mess.
All of that said, this is still in its infancy. And although it may be hard to believe whilst playing, so are MMORPGs. There is still years of development and upgrading yet to come before the online worlds are going to be 'real' enough for the taxman to rear his ugly head. You would need to have an abundance of trade on a regular basis with a system introduced by the governments to tax the players and to keep up with the trade on every server. For now anyway, taxation in games looks like it's a few years off at least.
In contrast to the planet earth, RuneScape's economy is actually quite good at the moment. Items are being bought and sold quite easily for a fair enough prices. However, it is predicted that when the Christmas holidays come and people have more time to play online for those few days, prices will soar. So if you are a seller, start stocking up for the Christmas rush and if you are a buyer be sure to shop around being buying a bag of gold in LaTale.
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