United States Moves Closer to Virtual World Taxation
Sunday, January 18, 2009 15:05
Remember that virtual McMansion your mom told you not to buy, because it might turn out that you didn’t have all the money needed to pay for it? Well… we hate to break it to you, but your mom might have been right. On January 7, 2009 the United States Internal Revenue Service moved closer to taxing virtual goods and transactions following the release of national taxpayer advocate and adviser Nina Olson’s 2008 Annual Report to Congress. The primary objective of Olson’s report is to shed light on existing and emerging issues needing to be addressed by the IRS. In this years report, Olson pushes to simplify the tax code, improve the IRS’ handling of tax payers experiencing financial hardship, among other recurring issues. The new player on the table this year though is the necessity, Olson says to “pro-actively address emerging issues such as those arising from virtual worlds.”






