Is this even possible? PC Advisor reports here that the IRS (called 'The Revenue') is spying on SL using something called Xenon, described in the article as 'a new high-tech snooper computer system'. Despite sounding kinda fishy to begin with, first the article says that there are rumors about tax agents creating avatars just to look into people making money, then later mentions the Xenon thing.Thing is, though, there's no reason for spying. The IRS knows that people are making money in SL. The question has always been 'Are virtual world profits taxable?' Until that becomes law, there's no reason for The Revenue to be snooping around SL, or anywhere else for that matter. This is not a clandestine operation. But I would like someone to enlighten me about Xenon, please.
(Via pcadvisor)
[Clarification: The IRS we're referring to here is the UK Inland Revenue Service, otherwise known as HMRC]
1. This is similar to the IRS check on Paypal... this is meant to find people who use offshore creditcards to avoid taxes in the US. So if you have a domestic creditcard and sell your lindens for dollars and charge them back, then this income is automatically known to the IRS and you are wise to keep some track of your Lindens to avoid IRS issues.
This is no reason for alarm and has been around for quite a while... It is only the real large scale "tax-wise" people who have set up constructs to avoid detection of income in the US, who should not start looking for other virtual worlds to expand into ;-)
Posted at 2:26AM on Aug 30th 2007 by Deeeep Witte