Death, Probate, and Inheritance Tax

This is a question I have wanted to ask for some time now, and I have decided to succumb to temptation and tax (pardon the pun) your Linden brains.

I run an open declared business as a UK IFA at Caledon Cay. Having been around for a little time in Second Life I am aware that most people who come to Second Life and try to start a profitable business represents a good example of blind hope and optimism that overcomes the initial needs of a good business plan, sound finance, and knowing the market.

But despite these odds against success there are some that do succeed in business here. Indeed from your own data tables I note more than 2,000 avatars are making more than $100 per month profit, and of that total about 250 are coining more than $1,000 per month and about 100 around $5,000 per month. In addition there has been more than 2,300 transaction in excess of $L100, 000 in November and 93 in excess of $L500,000.

You have in excess of 50,000 premium accounts, 250 square kilometres of Linden land held by avatars, and an increasing amount of Linden dollars held by residents.

Clearly some avatars are successful and have build viable businesses, in some cases these businesses may be worth a substantial real life amount of money.

So against this backdrop my question is this.

Do you have any mechanism in place that recognises the death of a human (rather than that of a credit card billing failure) and any procedures that enable the transfer of Linden assets to that Humans Estate to be distributed in accordance with a Will – in other words a Probate process? And are you able to value such assets as (at least) in my country (UK) they can be subject to Inheritance Tax. Finally on this point would you be prepared to over ride file permissions on created and acquired objects to enable such a transfer of value?

Signs off with an evil grin

Regards

John Horner

Hi John,

Good question! I'm asking Ginsu Linden, our legal eagle, to reply to this for you.

-Pathfinder

Section 2.4 of our Terms of Service notes:

"You may not transfer your Account to any third party without the prior written consent of Linden Lab; notwithstanding the foregoing, Linden Lab will not unreasonably withhold consent to the transfer of an Account in good standing by operation of valid written will to a single natural person, provided that proper notice and documentation are delivered as requested by Linden Lab."

In other words, we will generally honor transfers of accounts to a person through a will. As for valuing assets - it is my understanding that taxpayers are generally responsible for valuing their own assets properly.