LindeX trading: Linden Gold

I'd like to suggest a change to LindeX:

Rather than accumulating US$ in the SL credit account, the account accumulates "Linden Gold". In other words, rather than selling at L$275/US$1, you sell at L$275/Lg1, and recieve the proceeds into your Lg account.

Buyers still buy with US$ from their credit cards in the normal way; Linden Labs recieves the US$ and issues the matching amount of Lg, less fees, to the seller. Lg can be sold to LL for US$ on a 1:1 basis at the point where it's cashed out. Land tier can be paid with Lg.

As you can see, basically all I'm suggesting doing here is renaming US$ However, the reason for requesting this change is that it will eliminate potential tax difficulties that might arise with earning credits in a real currency US$. Users who don't want to cash out, but just pay for their land with their sales, may wind up having to pay extra tax if it is deemed that the US$ credit in account is taxable. Moving this credit account amount to an unreal currency, LindenGold, may lessen the chance of this happening.

Although it might seem that Lg is a clear analog of US$ and thus no-one would be fooled for a second, several online games operate similar systems (eg, IVMU "credits", Magic Online "tix", Puzzle Pirates "doubloons", Flyff "GPotatoes" (! )) without seeming to encounter tax problems.

what about assuming your liability to the tax system instead?

This can add a lot of complications for people who don't cash out money. In some countries at least, if you declare business income for tax purposes a lot of other regulations kick in as well - such as business liabilities, and the potential for being audited. Someone who just sells a few things they made to get a free Premium isn't likely to want to get into them.

And they could be in trouble if they do too well.. because if they can't, or don't want to, cash out completely (for example, they can't/don't want to give their RL bank account direct details to PayPal), then they have to pay the tax on their SL sales and income from RL money they get from other sources. This could cause trouble to RL finances - in an extreme case it's possible someone could be forced to close down their SL store because their RL finances don't cover the tax, and they can't pay the taxman with the months-years of free land ownership they've gained in credit.