Second Life and Virtual Worlds
In working my way through the Anxieties Canary lists in her article I get to the tenth, taxes…
In America the IRS is the Internal Revenue Service. It is the taxing agency of the American government that has its own courts and law enforcement officers. It also has over 1,977 forms, 90,000+ (2015) employees, and 74,000 pages or 3.7 million words of tax law that it enforces (Reference) without regard to the Constitutional principal of Due Process.
Psyke Phaeton has an article up on the Lab’s new request for tax information. Since Psyke lives outside the USA (Australia) and is not a US citizen he does not have to pay US taxes. But, the US government forces Linden Lab to collect a 30% tax from foreign nationals making money in the USA. If the Lab cannot get RL tax information on an individual they cannot pay them and in some cases may have to close their SL account, which Psyke says happened to him.
Psyke made the Psyke’s Defense Systems® HomeSecurity™ Orb. You can find it in the Market Place here. The web site is here.
The Second Life blog now has a post from the Lab regarding tax reporting issues. See: Required Tax Documentation. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requires Linden Lab to collect and retain Form W-9 (for U.S. residents) and Form W-8BEN (for non-U.S. residents) at certain transaction volumes. If you reach the transaction threshold and we do not … Read more