The Dam has Broken for SL

Who is going to withhold them? Anyone who makes a profit in SL is self employed. (Lindens excluded) We are responsible for both the reporting of the income and paying the taxes. In the United States those will include both the income tax and the FICA taxes.

Noooooooooooo!
/me teleports away, leaving behind a smoking, spinning prim shoe. A butterfly, newly free of its owner, flutters away.
Oh, okay. I didn't realize you were considering tax on $L and tax on $L converted to USD as separate things. Yes, it becomes taxable when it is converted to USD. I think that is the assumption we're all working off of. It would be inconceivable to track the income at any higher level of detail than that.

EXACTELY!!!! This is what makes all this BS about the gambling a MOOT point. Like it or don't, by tying the SL gaming sites to online gambling...LL is insinuating that L$ ARE CURRENCY!!!

We don't have a VAT here in the US.

Like I said, tolerance in all things...escorts, sex clubs, goths, furrys, dance clubs....

Then you can buy any ware without paying taxes for the ware. Even better

As for Europe: every company who offers online services or digital wares to EU citizens has to pay VAT to the home country of the customer. I'll just assume that LL does so. Obviously they don't, otherwise they'd increase their prices for European customers by 17% like SOE and Blizzard did, but that's LL's tax fraud and not mine. As a customer, I can reasonably assume that I've paid VAT for everything I bought online and therefore acquitted my tax duty.

Quoting myself from another thread:

Let's say you invite all your friends and neighbours and everyone else who'd like to come for a poker game. You even advertise your poker evenings in the local newspaper. You sell beer coasters as poker chips to your guests and run a game with high stakes. Would that be legal in the USA? I highly doubt it. But that doesn't make a currency of beer coasters.

HELLO!!!!!!!!!!! - there can be NO VIOLATION of the UIGEA on the part of LL yet because there have been NO REGULATIONS DEVELOPED OR ADOPTED YET!!!! Without the regulations there is nothing, repeat nothing to enforce!

A major part of the UIGEA was a mandate to develop the regulations. It was supposed to be within 120 days. The agency responsible has already passed that mandated time limit and has requested extensions because they haven't been able to come up with the required regulations. They have not given a date when they will be ready. Read the law.

What about the Wire Act? It doesn't apply at all.

Read the law!

Nobody reads the danged laws!! They only quote what they "HEAR"!!!!!

Ummm. No?

*looks around* The internet tubes still appeared to be clogged with dumptrucks of money, and aside from a few blue-haired, octagenarian republican drivers, all lanes appear to be open.

/me replaces "gambling" with "first land" or "age play" or "live help".

Haven't we had this discussion before?

It won't do any Good, even if you explain it in tiny little words, some people don't Understand,
regal Read the exact same words, and STILL came up with:

A completely Bass Ackwards assessment of what was said.
Regal, the Lindens are the CHIPS in this Scenario, NOT the Cashout. Poker chips are NOT Currency, and they are Not Taxable like Currency. An object that can be converted into Currency is not in fact, or by Inference a Currency it's Self.

Angel.

Angel,

Thank you ever so for your tiny little words.

Let's just agree to disagree...shall we?

Regal

HELLO AGAIN! Thats the point. They aren't money unless you cash them out! If you never cash them out - they have no value - just like casino chips! Casino chips have absolutely no cash value except at the tellers cage in the casino that issued the chips. "But I can pay for drinks and give tips with them!" Yep, and you are giving a worthless plastic disk, of no value outside the casino, to someone. When they take it to the teller it is converted to value there with REAL LEGAL TENDER. There is no value until conversion.

Theres a great story of actual fact out of, I believe its Taiwan - somewhere over in the far east, they pay to play pachinko. It is illegal there to gamble for money. They pay for the balls and put them in the machine and win - more balls. Now, they arent allowed to sell these balls back to the establishment for money as that would be considered gambling. But they can get a ticket for credit to buy things at the prize booth. Think Chucky Cheese and ski-ball. They have all the usual stuff - plastic flowers, gum, sunglasses, candy, stuffed animals etc. Nothing that has any real cash value at all. These people spend millions and millions of the equivalent of US dollars every year to play these games to get tickets to by worthless crap.

Now why would these people, mostly poor people at that, spend whats to them major parts of their meager incomes to be able to buy stuff at the "worthless prize" counter. One item! A tiny inch high silver colored plastic bear in a golden paper box! Value, probably a penny by US standard.

And they buy them by the millions with their credit for play tickets. Then they walk out of the Pachinko Parlor, they then walk down two streets and up one, and stop in the middle of the block beside a big blank wall that has a very small slide out tellers tray mounted flush in the wall. There are no signs, no names, no nothing - just a giant blank building wall with the tiny slide out tray. They push a button, the tray slides out, they put in the little golden box with the bear, the tray disappears into the wall. A few moments later the tray slides out and the box is gone replaced by currency. The player walks away with cash in his pocket.

Sorry, just had to throw that in - it's a really cool story. But it illustrates the circumsatnce well. If the player keeps the "bear" it is worthless. When he sells it, it then has value.

All my Lindens are valueless - and should remain so so that i can do what i want with them in the way that I choose. I have played a ton of poker in SL and won a lot of Lindens. I do not say I have won a lot of money. Why, because i have never sold a Linden back for cash. And even if I did, there is absolutely no way anyone anywhere - not even the great GOD LINDEN, can look at individual Linden units and know where each one came from. From my real estate deals, gifts, selling art. The whole thing is so stupid - and Linden Labs succumbed to the evil that is appeasement.

In my opinion - its not the UIGEA or the FBI that has brought this on. Its all the corporations and big clients and the idea of making SL mainstream and politically correct to attract all those BIG guns. The big guys TuT TuT the Casinos, well Casinos must go to make the prospective/current client happy.

Here is a final interesting note that involved the perfectly legal business of prostitution in New Orleans in 1917. Thousands of folks made their living and supported their families, fed and schooled there children, and supported their local economy through this completely legal endeavor. In the matter of one month - all these people were thrown out of work and all their property that had taken decades to build up made completely valueless. Why, because one man decided that even though it was legal - it wasn't "right" that these people do this. Does this story sound familiar?

THE STORY OF STORYVILLE

During the Civil War, the occupying Union Army found the bawdy houses to their liking and a string of them opened along the old basin canal. In the 1870’s, New Orleans’ most famous madame, Josie Arlington, formally opened her own bordello in this neighborhood.
Around the turn-of the-century, Alderman Sidney Story proposed an ordinance to rid the better residential neighborhoods of the bordellos. The sporting houses were then restricted to a single area on the far side of the French Quarter. Ironically, the area came to be called “Storyville” after the alderman.

In Storyville, women such as “Countess” Willie Piazza and Josie Arlington ran pash and luxurious houses with oil paintings, fine wines and potted palms. Many of the houses were staffed by the madame’s stunning octoroon and quadroon “nieces”, who were usually girls whose families had fallen on hard times. The popularity of female Creoles of color in the bordellos caused many old-line Creole families to send their strictly raised daughters to convents until they were old enough to marry.

When World War I began, Josephus “Tea Totaling” Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, threatened to close down the New Orleans naval base if Storyville was not shut down.

Because of this, the district was officially closed in 1917 and prostitution once again became a clandestine activity.

Most of the area of Storyville was torn down in the 1930’s to make way for the Iberville Housing Project.

RIP SL

There's a major difference to casino chips though. Linden Lab never paid anyone real currency for Linden dollars. You can only sell them to other residents. Aside from that, neither you nor the person who buys L$ from you gains ownership of the virtual item, only the rights to use them within SL.

In RL, it would look like this: you buy casino chips and possibly win some more chips. But you can't convert them to money again. You can't even take the worthless chips home with you; if you leave the casino (i.e., cancel your account), you will have to give them back without a refund.
All you can do is to stay inside the casino and beg other visitors to buy chips from you. You can offer them cheaper than the casino staff. You can go as far as trading chips for cigarettes or matchsticks (i.e., buy wares within SL). But there is no guarantee whatsoever that you will ever manage to get rid of the chips, because they have no currency value.

That's an incorrect explanation of value. The definition of value is:

The economic value of something is how much a product or service is worth to someone relative to other things (often measured in money).

To take your casino chip example. If you assert they have no value outside the casino, take some $1000 chips and throw them in the air outside the casino on the Las Vegas strip. You'll start a riot.

Why ? Because the casino undertakes to allow conversion of the chips to US$, drink, hotel accomodation, XXX services or whatever else they offer. As long as they make good on that promise of conversion, the chips have inherent value. If the casino were to go bust, then the chips would only be worth the value of their material recycle value maybe 1 or 2 cents.

Lets look at some other examples: Stocks of companies are just pieces of paper. The whole value of the stock is based on the expectation that the company will produce a certain amount of profit and dividend. You cannot even redeem a stock in most cases, only sell it to someone else. But they have value none the less.

Lets look at the US$ itself. The US$ has value because people have an expectation of a certain stability in the $US money supply. If the US government were to suddenly print $500 trillion and dump it into circulation, the US$ would basically be worthless.

DA DURH you cash them in as US$ and they become taxable income, if you do not understand the basics of how this works please stfu thx

New Orleans would be better off if Storyville still existed than it is w/the Iberville Projects. But, that would bring in today's self appointed moral guardians to shut it down.

Something that i don't think has been mentioned, LL standing on top of Telegraph Hill and proclaiming that the linden is currency wouldn't make it so.

There is no entity in the US, including the individual states, except the Federal Government that can create or make any token, chip, pierce of scrap paper or digital bit, legal currency.

Unless and until the Feds say that the linden is currency it is not and never will be such.

DING DING DING we have a winner, another good example is a 401k plan

By which stage they are not L$ are they. If you can't understand the basics of that follow your own advice.

some people just will not get it no matter how lucid your explanation is...

You are the only one saying lindens - I merely said I pay my taxes. If I cash out I pay taxes on that money. I think you are being deliberately obtuse.

It's really very simple, you convert your L$ to US$, you then transfer those US$ via your Pay Pal account to your RL bank account where they appear as US$ (or other currency depending on the country in which you reside), these funds are are considered 'income' and are hence subject to taxation just like any other form of income.

Alternatively, you could simply leave your L$ in your SL Lindon account in which case they are not subject to taxation, however if you are one of the SL residents who's main RL income comes from SL profits (and there are some such people) then those L$ aren't going to pay the RL bills or put RL food on your RL table. Those people must convert their L$ to RL currency and therefore pay taxes.

No but the reason I was mentioning Lindens is because that would move the goalposts, from the position you currently describe where you pay tax when you cash out, to a new position when you could potentially get taxed even if they stay inworld, or that's what those who are suggesting the L$ has value are implying. That's why I kept emphasising L$, I wasn't trying to be obtuse and I apologise if I came over that way.

That's not what I ws talking about, I'm talking about whether inworld L$ can be taxed when they stay inworld. That's the issue people are raising about whether the L$ has value. That's why I kept saying people don't pay tax on L$, because as you yourself say, whilst it's L$ it's not taxable.

this thread title is worded wrong

it should be:

That Dam SL has broken.

there that should help