work in SL? IRS Says you must get MINWAGE

Oh agreed, they've got their noses firmly in the trough, absuing the system to give their wives and kids "jobs" and taking the piss out of tax payers, it still doesn't mean my taxes wouldn't be lower if everyone paid what they should pay.

When we pay utility bills, stores fees and other bills we pay an amount to cover the money lost to liars, thieves and blaggards.

wow that is a good question..if they do do this thing i would think it would not just affect Americans..i would think there would be a tax of some kind in game..god i feel stupid saying that lol
i mean the whole thing just sounds stupid that the freaking IRS is even touching this area or thinking of it or whatever they are doing..
but if they did i would say there would be a sales tax on things and then i am gonna get them with writeoffs like a bish in heat cause my state i get to write off sales taxes on my fed form hahahaha and i'll go back 3 years on them cause i've been saving them..

Even a Volunteer or Mentor can be considered an employee as EA learned after it was sued by UO's Counsellor Program, and Sony learned after being sued by there Guide Program, and as previously stated AOL's volunteers. If you do work and a company is profiting from it, you are entitled to fare wage. For those curious of results afterwards, EA paid out to it's counsellors then shut down the program damaging the game as it stood, Sony paid out but now has 2 levels of guides, ones who get paid, and ones who are not under NDA, who know nothing about the company, and can just login volunteerly whenever they want using there own accounts they already pay for.

According to the Wikipedia article (for what it's worth), the AOL suit is still unresolved. The suit itself has been enough to get AOL to cancel the program, and they lost their request for summary judgment, but the suit remains to be decided.

The court decision denying summary judgment is online at http://www.aolclassaction.com/uploads/SJDECN.pdf , and makes for interesting reading. The issues are far more complicated than you might expect. There were training programs, required hours and time reporting, and duties that are not what we might expect from a mentor, guide, or moderator program (such as checking charges to customer accounts for validity).

I haven't found comparable information for the EA or sony cases.

Presumably, the state where the work is done. Just like Wal-Mart, which is a Delaware Corporation with headquarters in Arkansas still has to satisfy local minimum wage laws on a store by store basis.


As has already been said, minimum wage is not an IRS issue.

In fact, the contractor versus employee question, which is an IRS issue, has nothing to do with increased revenue. The government typically gets the same amount of revenue either way. (I think high wage earners may create an exception, but I'd have to look it up to be sure.) It's primarily an issue of fairness - making sure the right people are paying the tax bill.

This is just cynical rubbish.

Sure, there are politicians who abuse the system. There are also politicians who were wealthy before getting elected, which raises a different set of problems, but they're entitled to their houses and vacations. It's even true that there are cases where lobbyists abuse the system, with their money (not taxpayers' money) be funneled into personal gain for politicians.

There are also abuses in the system by people who aren't directly involv. Hyed with the government. There's pork barrel legislation, which isn't always unjustified. There are inefficiencies which aren't abusive or unethical, but which do add to costs.

But as someone who's actually served on a municipal finance committee (a volunteer, appointed position), I have some sense of where the money's going. Our budget for elected officials (i.e. politicians) is dwarfed by the budget for police and highway departments. Our share of school district budget is a lot more than our share of salaries and perqs for state-level elected officials.

So add some reality to your cynicism. Rational arguments about the tax system compel attention. Hyperbolic arguments just feed contempt.

I don't know much about the AOL one, but the EA and Sony ones i was part of and affected by both. With the EA one I ended up getting a paycheck as an external QA tester, but the fun times being a counsellor (mentor) and elder (quest master) were gone since they closed down everything once the few counsellors behind the lawsuit won and were paid compensation. They were volunteers from the start, but EA made the mistake of paying for a few to come to UO's studio to help design the new counsellor program, so the ones who took it to court had physical evidence of not being just a volunteer. In sonys suit it was the NDA, they filed that if they were required to file NDA's even as volunteers they were part of the company.

Just found this in a quick google search about the lawsuit to EA when it was originally filed..

A group of Ultima Online Counselors (those folks who volunteer their time to help you with any problems you may have while playing UO) filed a Class Action lawsuit in a Colorado district court yesterday, demanding "damages equal to three times Plaintiffs' unpaid minimum wage, and/or Plaintiffs' unpaid overtime compensation, as the case may be, attorneys' fees and costs, and injunctive relief," claiming that Origin and Electronic Arts were in, "violation of the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the FLSA" (Fair Labor Standards Act) and the Colorado Wage Act.

We're having a hard time figuring out why these people who signed up as volunteers are getting up in arms now about not getting paid. There may be more to this then just that, but from the outside looking in, it just seems like more people trying to cheat their way into more money.

It's more on a par with citing Encyclopedia Dramatica as a source of information. Worse; atleast ED are open about the fact they are merciless trolls with no grasp on the facts.

EDIT: Stupid retarded vBulletin

You say that about everything. The IRS aren't trying to take your guns, you know.

CSI:NY is closing on Thursday, May 15. That closing has been planned for at least a month, though we were asked to keep it confidential until this week. The IRS ruling was not relevant.

Shirley Marquez, CSI:NY Greeter

Yes, this is my point. I mean, if every time you volunteer to help someone, that suddenly defines you as an employee, I feel really bad for the charities of the world. So much for getting any volunteer help. Volunteer means just that, you offered your service, expertise, whatever, without expecting anything in return.


Main Entry:
1vol·un·teer Listen to the pronunciation of 1volunteer
Pronunciation:
\ˌvä-lən-ˈtir\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
obsolete French voluntaire (now volontaire), from voluntaire, adjective, voluntary, from Old French, from Latin voluntarius
Date:
circa 1600

1: a person who voluntarily undertakes or expresses a willingness to undertake a service: as a: one who enters into military service voluntarily b (1): one who renders a service or takes part in a transaction while having no legal concern or interest (2): one who receives a conveyance or transfer of property without giving valuable consideration

The minimum wage requirements don't apply to people who are volunteers for public service, religious, or humanitarian objectives and who are doing such work for non-profit or public sector organizations.

See http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/scope/er16.asp for some more information on this issue.

Thanks for the link, that's very interesting. I still don't see how the government can make people take payment when they want to offer their services for free. If what you are saying is true, then every SL resident should be paid by LL for all the beta testing we have been doing over the last years. But if I refuse payment, I don't see how the government can force me to take it.

/me takes the derringer out of her bra and breathes a sigh of relief.

Now the contents of Brenda's bra on the other hand......everyone's trying to get a piece of that.

Before you even get to the issue of volunteer versus paid, you have to look at the issue of employee versus contractor versus "not workers at all".

AOL argued that these people weren't really working for them at all. The lawyers for the volunteer workers pointed out things such as mandatory training, mandatory reports, mandatory hours, and duties that are traditionally done by employees. There's also a separate argument that doing well as a volunteer was a path towards regular employment. The court's decision (keeping in mind that this was only a decision on a motion for summary judgment) was that there's a plausible argument that they're doing work in a manner that would be considered employee work.

Beta testing generally doesn't have these characteristics. There's no specific requirement either on hours worked or on reporting them, there's no required training (but a beta test might be limited to people who've already had training in a product). Rarely there may be an agreement that beta testers will fill out a survey or report at the end of the test period. There may be an informal agreement of the form "you agree to actually try out the product" without specifying minimum hours.

For SL beta testing in particular, there's nothing - anyone can download the beta without installing it, install it without ever running it, run it without ever reporting a thing. You won't be prohibited from participating in the next beta just because you didn't file any bugs reports in a previous one. Plus, it's an established industry practice to use beta testers this way.

So the basic characteristics of being a worker aren't there, and hence it's not really comparable to the AOL case.

As for the refusal of payment, all they can do is force the employer to send you the money. You don't have to cash the check. But you'll be taxed on it as income, anyway. There's a legitimate reason for this: It would subvert the purpose of the minimum wage law if an employer could somehow coerce employees into refusing the money. This was part of the argument in the AOL case. One of the allegations is that AOL created an environment where people believed they had to spend some time "working for free" in order to get a job with AOL.

I see. Yes, anytime there becomes 'mandatory' anything, I don't think anyone could then call it true volunteering. So yes, the things you describe at AOL are quite different. Sounds like they worked harder than I do at my RL job LOL.

aahemmmm well maybe not everyone Conan. No offense Brenda, I am sure the contents of your bra are rather nice.

Problem is some are fruits.........