Should LL Enact a Sales / Transfer Tax to Fund Events?

Yes, it actually is "against capitalism to support a taxation system" _unless_ the purpose is governance of the free market (for example, enforcement of property rights and intellectual property rights [the same intellectual property rights you so blithely ignore when you re-sell freebies as there is no governance of the free market on the part of the Lindens]).

Second Life is not a democracy and has no obligation to promote democracy (SL is actually a "benevolent dictatorship". It already has a form of taxation to support education (Instructor subsidies), police (Liaison salaries), and roads: Premium memberships and tier fees. Second Life is not a nation and thus has no national interest.

There already is a system in place to act as a partial subsidy for event holders: Dwell/Traffic.

LoL... Dwell payouts are terribly small.

I have no interest in having my earnings stolen to fund a broken, apathetic industry.

Taking a percentage of my sales to fund SEXXXXXIEST ASS contests? No thanks.

Ultimately, though, the people hurt most by this are the consumers, who will have to stomach additional fees to pay for crap. How much will it suck to walk around SL seeing signs like

SUPER AIRPLANE! JUST L$599 (plus tax)

http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/250.html

The top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $57,343) earned 64.9 percent of nation’s income, but they paid more than four out of every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (83.9 percent).

Source: Internal Revenue Service

The quoted price should include tax, I agree on that. So if you set an item for sale at L$100 and the tax was 10%, it should show to the consumer as L$110

Of course, that depends on what you take "earned" to mean - I prefer the word "received", though there are worse ones you could use. And there are a lot more things than income tax.

Wouldn't want to go too far off-topic here though.

What a scary notion. The individuals who provide the most value to Second Life by selling the most useful and successful products should be screwed hardest?

I really need to start maintaining a list of people who say truly yucky things.

In any case, I'm paying for the resources I use in Second Life every month. If Linden Lab wants to increase the fees they charge me for resource access, they are free to do so by increasing my tier fee.

Juro, get out of my head.

The winner of this thread: Juro Kothari.

Don't forget, people can just go to the Foundation For Rich Content and ask for event funding.

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Citizen provided solutions to citizen problems.

We're all winners here.

Good point though - it would encourage creative enterprise. Mind you, I *would* say that as someone who mostly builds her own stuff.

I think you misspelled "whiners".

Dick around enough with the L$ and it'll be supplanted by the US$. It wouldn't be terribly difficult for high volume businesses to implement PayPal services tied to in-world vendors.

(customer clicks the buy button)

Thank you for your business, Newbie Nancy! Please the "Buy" button again to be sent to our PayPal payment page!

(customer fills out info)

Your payment has been received! Enjoy your new skirt!



Convenient as the L$? Hardly. But ultimately, the market will dictate how it wants to get paid.

I personally dont see a reason to tax at all ... I was just pointing out one of many various options that keep being presented in RL as a solution to the same discussion. My apologies for not clarifying that more completely at the time.

As for saying truly yucky things, would you like some peanut butter and pickle sandwiches? *eww... that's yucky!*

First of all.. No on Tax.

Wasn't the reason why they stopped sponsoring events was because people were abusing the system? The hundreds of sexiest avie contests ect were being funded yet didn't exactly follow the idea of compelling content.

I used to hold a film triva event every week until I ended up 8 hours ahead of SLT. I did get sponsored for that, L$500, which was how much I gave out in prizes. That didn't cover the long amounts of time coming up with extremly difficult and interesting questions. But it was fun and that's why I did it.

I think the biggest issue is people don't actually go to events that aren't ''sexiest avie'' contests. Last Sunday I had a swing dancing event... where people could try out new swing dancing animations and I had a DJ. It might not be the most interesting thing I could have put on, but its a bit different then the same top 40's pop junk and the same dance cube. Did anyone show up? No. So stop complaining already.

Content creators already pay a tax for uploading, why should we have to pay more?

LL creates the money. I don't think it was a shortage of L$ that made them stop sponsoring events.

If memory serves there actually was a transaction tax at one point. It was possible to go bankrupt just handing the same dollar back and forth between two avs.

No!

It's a non-issue...I have murmered!

Note the use of the term AGI or Adjusted Gross Income? That means income MINUS deductions. When you can deduct the cost of your humvee because it is a farm truck, of course you are going to get to pay personal taxes. When you own a home and can deduct the cost of your mortgage interest, you get to pay less tax. Etc. How many deductions can people who make in the BOTTOM 25% of the tax bracket get?

Does it hurt a person more to make 1,000 a week and pay 200 in taxes, or make 10,000 a week and pay 2,000 in taxes? It's kinda relative.

Of course, there is a great quote on this... "There are three types of lies - lies, damn lies, and statistics" - Mark Twain (I think)

A single day's worth of Dwell/Traffic monies can be qUite small. HoweveR, increMENTALly over a measurable period, for example, 30-days, it can add up to a total or near total subsidy for the parcel holder.

It is the obligation of the parcel holder to keep their expenses down if they wish to use Dwell/Traffic monies as a full subsidy for their account and tier fee costs. If the parcel holder fails to meet this expense while relying on Dwell/Traffic monies the Lindens are under no obligation to increase the total payout.

It's very simple: The greater the total tier size the harder it is to cover the tier fees with Dwell/Traffic monies.

O h great, a new thing to parallel the real world with... Taxes. How lovely.....

I can see in the not too distant future....

Your tax dollars are not being used properly to fund learning events or helping the newbies in need, your tax dollars are now funneled into the combat sims and combat weapontry. We all know that the super sim nuker is far more important than the welfare of a new resident. And in order to assure the safety of the new residents, we must declare war on the greifers! A Perpetual state of war I say!

How about just a luxury tax? Tax the sexballs I say! Tax the fancy cars! Tax the fancy jewelry! tax the Bling! and tax the cigs and booze while your at it!

I have nothing to offer on who is most pained by the taxes they pay. The statement reflects who pays the most dollars in taxes. Either way, the example you provide seems to be based on a flat income tax.

I can assure you that people in the top half of the tax bracket DO pay taxes. Quite a bit of them. Hummers, by and large, are not being written off as farm trucks. Tax scofflaws exist, but they are not the norm.

Isn't it amazing that humankind has a fantastic tendency to always take the good and the bad wherever we go? I bet someone can come up with a great yin/yang comment on this. I think it is because, to some, there is always a universal balancing act going on. They can't accept that this new world would be as good or better than the old one without bringing over everything. We all work toward our own definitions of utopia, but entropy will win out every stinking time. *sigh*

*claps furiously*

dude, why so pissed?

We're also lazy and create our brave new world by using the crappy solutions we already know of.