Should LL Implement a Sales Tax?

Put a tax on making forum polls!

It would kill 2 birds with one stone!

Read my lips: "No new taxes"

*giggle*

Sounds like you should have visited the OLD SL, where we had to pay for everything, were always broke, couldnt buy money online, or do any sort of large project.

So, I guess this tax is on everyone to help support money ball and bingo games? Why should everyone pay to support events in SL? I don't want to have to subsidize events run by other people.

Now taxes on light prims, that I would agree on!

I would be willing to pay as much as 10% sales tax if that would subsidize funding for arts and cultural events.

No way, a sales/transfer tax is the worst idea I have heard so far.

Me too! I have way too much money in SL. More than I could ever spend. Why not put some of it to productive use?

~Ulrika~

Oh, for gods sake. I didn't come here to play "Second Economy" or "Second Career". Jeez, people.

Unequivocably, NO. What the hell is the point? Nobody can use these 'taxes' for anything, and it's exactly equivalent to lowering the amount people get paid in stipend.

What the heck are Linden Dollars, anyway? When I first arrived here, they appeared to be an implementation of system resource allocation control. They've mutated into some sort of Real Cash (tm), it seems. Ugh.

How about we just remove the stipends/bonuses entirely?


Hey, it makes a hell of a lot more more sense than a sales tax!

An excellent idea!! I look forward to hearing your upcoming announcement about an endowment for the arts you are funding with your money! And think, since *you* will be funding it, *you* get to decide what arts to sponsor!

-AP

Uh... then maybe you should try spending YOUR money to support what YOU believe is a productive use. Incredible idea huh?

Upskirt Museums? Glory of the torus? Torleys 100 page essay on the effects of packet loss on the esthetic rendering of Bump mapped fingernails complete with snapshots of upskirts??? Woot!

Though I could see the neccessity of a sales tax far into the future, I don't think that the system is mature enough to support one now.

If, to control inflation, and provide for universal accessibility in SL, and to support the overall longevity of SL, I had to pay, for example, 5% sales tax on all sales somewhere down the road, I would not be against it.

However, this would not be effective in the current situation as all sellers would simply raise their prices by the amount of the tax. The net effect would be a wash.

The first, and near term problem I have with a tax on -transfers- is that I use obect transfers, between myself and my alt, as BACKUP. We currently have no way to perform backup; transferring a copy of my avatar projects to my alternate account is the ONLY form of safeguarding I can take at this point to protect what I make from system crashes -- and as we know, inventory losses do happen.

I don't see why such a transaction should be taxed. Furthermore, would it be done per prim, or per object? It would have to be based on overall valuation, and sometimes multi-part sets are sold at one package valuation. (i.e., all the parts for our avatars at L$900.)

I'm not sure how a tax would be performed on this. The system would have to be able to distinguish between a sale and an unrelated payment. It would have to be able to identify a taxable transaction and distinguish it from a non-taxable one.

So I don't think the architecture is mature enough to support something like this; and as I said, all it would do is cause sellers to pad their prices.

I believe the proposer of this thread was looking for a way to "hit the content producers in the pocketbook", since the clubbers/socialites were "hit in the pocketbook" by this last change. It wouldn't do so. It'd be passed on to the purchasers. You couldn't even TOS your way out of that one; people get to set their own prices of their goods.

The wealth redistribution aspect of this likely won't work either. One would have to wonder about the results of 'alt banking', and other ways to avoid the tax system. It will, of course, happen if this is implemented.

Perhaps it's something that may be neccessary for the economy 5 years down the road. But I don't think that's what the point of this post was. I believe it was to 'get back' at the 'filthy rich content barons' - a sort of new logic I don't understand. It's not the content producers that were getting free money from LL.

While I am currently involved in just such an endeavor, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), one person does not make an economy. If my income were so high that the redistribution of it alone could fund productive work in SL, I'd do it. However it does not, hence the question on taxes.

~Ulrika~

With all due respect, it is extremely arrogant of you to imply you are the only person in SL with money who is willing to privately fund such endeavors. There are enough out there who do and will indeed fund productive work in SL ... WITHOUT the need for taxes or other silliness.

-AP

Antagonist thinks I'm arrogant. Oh, the drama! *swoon*

~Ulrika~

I still have my tea-crate, don't make me use it again!

Nope, sorry.

It'd be impossible to enforce a sales tax.

1. I can script my way around it.
2. On large purchases people would just deal with Ebay.
3. NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!!!
4. Taxation just to reduce money in the economy has got to be the most irresponsible use of taxes ever. Taxes are designed as a way for elected government to provide services for citizens, NOT for simply taking money away.

Not really.. LL could just tax a percentage of however much you "Pay" to somebody or some thing. If you Pay JohnDoe L$100, then 5% would force an Auto-Deduction of L$105.

If all you have is L$100 in your account, then your account will end up -L$5. As soon as money is put back into your account, the 1st dollars go to bring your account back to L$0, then whatever is left over goes into your account.

Nothing is impossible, except having the will to make it possible.

Of all the people to advocate in-world taxation...

Well, I shoulda known someone would suggest hard-coding "pay".

1. This is impractical since us scripters need to test out everything we make. I'd hate to have us taxed on payments to ourselves. Now, this could be waived for payment to self, I suppose, but often times other people will test my scripts, so it's still a problem.
2. As I stated, people could just use paypal to get around it.
3. People would barter more.
4. If this was implemented, someone would start a business that issued gold certificates, equivalent to L$. These certificates could be no-copy, no-mod, and authenticity kept by looking at the object's creator. These certificates could then be exchanged in liu of Linden Dollars.

Like I said, completely unenforcable.

Bad idea.

You are, but not because of what he said. To say people should be forced to pay something in order to support your pet causes, because you know better than customers what is and isn't good, is arrogant behaviour in my book. Mild inflation is less damaging to society than this tax idea. I don't mean to be rude, but a sales tax is a bad, bad, bad, bad, BAD idea. As in, BAD!

Why?

Yes and Yes

Modern day Robin Hood.

Steal from the rich to feed the poor.

Except Robin Hoob stole from the nobility, you know, those people just sat in their asses collecting taxes from the people, not the rich as in people who worked for their wealth. A sales tax won't help anyone, at all.