Taxation of Virtual assets (video game wealth)

This is absolutely rediculous, the IRS among other parasitic leeches is figuring out how they can tax virtual assets in video games like World of War Craft.
This shows in my opinion that the gov't uses taxes for control & not for actual need to create wealth to sustain its bloated corrupt tyranny.
They want to tax computer game wealth. Dungeon & dragon gold pieces?
This is dumb, stupid, moronic. WTF?

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.
scientificamerican.com

Mod Edit: Link format edited. Please review this post.

Mod Edit to apply external quote code, please review this link



[edit on 23-10-2006 by DontTreadOnMe]

Your getting this all wrong.

They want to tax the real life profits made on the real life sale and trade of ingame services and items.

People sell unique high class weapons, high class armors, virtual cash on e-bay and other sites and sell leveling services all over the place, for real $$$.

[edit on 23/10/06 by thematrix]

No they already tax the profits made in the real world from selling online assets, however they actually want to tax virtual real estate, virtual castles & lands, etc.

Ah crud, now I have to start paying taxes on my GW guildhall and I already payed for the darn thing... If this is true then sweet mother of Josephine is it going to kill the online gaming community. Buy a sword? Thats 50,000gp and $12.00 tax payable with paypal to the federal govt. or deductible on your tax return! You know it might not sound like a massive money maker untill you think about how many games use online housing and stuff and trade... Think about it, there are over 1 million gamers worldwide ALL interacting on USA servers and mother computers, thus they can be taxed on THIS end. Multiply that by how many games they use and have: usualy if you have 1 computer game you wind up buying more later on. So in the end you have a couple million extra to add to the govt. paycheck. Leeches!