EU tax officials confront the most pressing legal question of our time: If you sell RuneScape gold to someone and they use it to buy a magic sword, do you still have to pay taxes?
Submitted 14 hours ago by Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Comments
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 1 hour ago
Earning 400,000€ in two years makes you part of the 1% though?? Where else would this guy be? Upper middle class?
vane@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Food safety organs need to inspect all those Stardew Valley farms.
truthfultemporarily@feddit.org 13 hours ago
This is actually really interesting!
This taxable individual, Kokott explains, was found to have bought and resold through “various forums, groups, and platforms such as Facebook, Discord, and Skype” enough RuneScape gold to earn €415,484—approximately $488,000 USD—between 2021 and 2023.
They then were ordered to backpay VAT because they made above 45k. Defendant says trading virtual currencies is like trading crypto, and VAT exempt. Government says its like selling a voucher instead.
Its corner cases like this one that make taxes complicated for regular people.
I also find it hilarious that tax lawyers and accountants will have to read that court decision.
ICastFist@programming.dev 9 hours ago
Shit, sounds like I should set up some runescape bots to sell gold, even if I only get like 10k USD a year, that’s doubling my income
ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com 13 hours ago
Can I get taxed if I buy a gf for 25k?
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Yeah you pay VAT because you are buying a service. But you “gf” has to collect it and pay it to the tax agency.
meldrik@lemmy.wtf 12 hours ago
You don’t pay VAT on a personal transaction though. But the girlfriend would probably have to pay income tax.
ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 11 hours ago
Depending on the country, and depending on the gift, yes. Though it’s mostly not enforced.
Gonzako@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Damn, good use of their time! Not going after trillionaries, no.
Someplaceunknown@leminal.space 9 hours ago
RuneScape still exists?
commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
OSRS is legit on its way to become bigger than it was in 2007 on miniclip days, it broke 250k players recently I believe, there’s also been a WoW streamer exodus towards OSRS too
So yes
crumbguzzler5000@feddit.org 8 hours ago
Yer god damn right it does! Nostalgia is a helluva drug.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Yeah seems like the writer of the PC Gamer article doesn’t understand what VAT is.
Yeah VAT is not a tax on money made. VAT is a tax that is applied to a transaction for goods and service between a business and a consumer. VAT is a tax that the consumer pays. The business only collects it and has the obligation to pay it to the tax services.
The question here was if RuneScape gold is a product or if it is legal tender. If it was legal tender then you don’t pay VAT on it, similar to when if you trade one currency to another VAT is not applied.
Thorry@feddit.org 12 hours ago
The real genius behind VAT is that it isn’t just applied to transactions between business and consumer, but to all transactions. The rule is normally very simple, it’s applied to all transactions, with few exceptions. The rate can vary, but those rules are also usually very simple. The trick is: When a business has a transaction with another business, VAT is still applied, but the selling party has to levy the tax and forward it to the government and the purchasing party can ask the government to give back the tax they paid on the transaction.
This may seem a bit convoluted, where the tax goes through the government only to end up back in the business. But this ensures the tax is applied always. Normally a profitable company would sell their products for more than the components they purchased. The difference between these two is the value added. And by getting back less from the purchases as what they have to pay for sales, the tax is only applied to the value added. And for consumers it functions as a sales tax, being applied to all transactions and no way around it.
This system is way harder to mess with than any other form of sales tax. The rules are simple with few exceptions and thus very easy to reinforce. It’s also a more fair system, where each party in the chain pays a part instead of the consumer paying for all of it.
In the end the consumer pays most, but as the taxes are supposed to be used to make their lives better, it seems like a fair deal? Now if you have a government that’s more about filling their own pockets than actually doing what they need to do to improve the lives of the people living there, well then you are going to have a bad day. But that doesn’t happen in civilized countries right?
Tetsuo@jlai.lu 10 hours ago
VAT fraud is harder but my god when some people achieved it they pretty much unlocked a money spawn glitch IRL…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_trader_fraud?wprov=…
MBech@feddit.dk 12 hours ago
If Runescape gold is legal tender, do I have to pay taxes on my earnings from my Zulrah grind?
commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
Yeah, that’s why they added the GE tax
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Probably income tax or a gambling tax like what you’d pay if you win money one a game show. But there is a threshold, so tax free for small earnings.
brsrklf@jlai.lu 12 hours ago
Even if they went that way (good luck with that), doesn’t that mean farming gold regularly and for profit should still be registered as a professional activity? Or at least the result of it declared as revenue?
I don’t think they want that.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Of course he still needs to pay income tax. But that’s something else from VAT.
Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
Speaks greatly for the quality of pcgamer. Guess the schools in the USA aren’t the very best.
mushroomman_toad@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 hours ago
to be fair, I don’t think any US state has VAT.