Yeah seems like the writer of the PC Gamer article doesn’t understand what VAT is.
To laymen like you and I, this situation probably seems pretty open and shut. If you make money on something, you pay taxes on it.
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. So even if a business makes zero profit they still need to pay the VAT they collected.
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.
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.
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?
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?
Yeah EU VAT opened up a whole can of issues. It’s super complicated and annoying, with all sorts of weird exceptions. The exact opposite of what VAT was supposed to be. EU countries should have just gotten their shit together instead of this patch work.
I’ve actually seen that fraud in action. People used to ship around huge amounts of phones and CPUs, because they were high value, but took up very little room. A truck full of pallets of tray CPUs could be worth a huge amount.
I think now most of the holes are patched. But for a while there were special rules surrounding phones and CPUs just because they were often used in the fraud scheme.
We should know if the gf is selling herself as a second hand sale or if it’s a recurring economic activity. If so, she should register in VAT and collect it.
(Legality of that economic activity may differ by country)
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.
Fascinating story. The narrative at the time was that casual games were just too lucrative to bother with SiN sequels after Emergence, but of course, the truth has a lot more nuance.
Waiting for the unofficial patch then, true to VTMB1
A personnal opinion: I feel that this game might become one of my all-time favorites, considering that CybP77 is already part of that group. It being a game, that if described as having simply an “amazing atmosphere and cyberpunk world”, would be blatantly undervalued as it is the best in that regard, second to none, with additionaly very good writing and… not so great combat… The description given by the journalist describes perfectly the cyberpunk 2077 combat system too; some tactics/ cyberware (disciplines) are to annoying or hard to use to be effective and others are just instant win buttons (looking at you sandevistan (celerity)).
One of the best builds to make CP2077 absolutely horrible to play is stealth + tech weapons. You spend all of you time crouched behind boxes, first trying akwardly to sneak your way in, and then shooting through them with the wallhack weapons.
Meanwhile other players clear the same mission in 45 seconds looking like the worlds biggest action hero badass with sandevistan and katanas and hacks and shit :D
Stealth is just bad overall, like in most games where it isn’t the main way to do things, as both the player playing stealthily and the one playing like rambo must be able to complete the mission and earn the same rewards
I checked Robin’s site profile to make sure she wasn’t one of the people who thought Dragon Age Veilguard had good writing first thing. Nope that was Lauren, my bad.
Still doubt it but I’m hopeful now. I play all the higher rated low budget Choose Your Own Adventure text adventures/VN Masquerade games on Steam.
That said, I’ll find it pretty funny if the combat is truly as bad as it was in the first Bloodline game. I like Redemption best, and if I can get through that gameplay steamer I can get through this…probably not at launch price.
I believe the developer has practically no experience with action games, so the combat being subpar wouldn’t be unexpected. I definitely wouldn’t be playing a WoD game for its combat though. I’d want a good story, characters, and the right aesthetics.
People put too much hope into it. Personally, as a big WoD fan, I don’t care if it’s mediocre or worse. Thanks to Paradox, there have been many new games of the universe, so it wouldn’t be much of a loss. I don’t mind them being text-based either. It’s a lot better than nothing, which is how it was for many years.
If you’re looking for a fix of Bloodlines, just play the last Deus Ex games if you haven’t. They’re the same thing but without vampires.
Here’s one that’ll hit them closer to home: The original Donkey Kong is literally a mod for the earlier Radar Scope cabinets. Nintendo had better hope they don’t wind up with any video game nerds in any juries or they’re going to open a can of worms on themselves that they really don’t want to have wriggling all over their lap.
If mods aren't real games, can we reverse the cease and desists for all the fan mods they've killed? After all, if they aren't real games and aren't to be considered legally for patent/trademark/copyright then they aren't violating anything?
I honestly think it’s absurd you can be doing something for nearly 30 years (longer than a patent lasts) and then try to get a patent on it retroactively. That seems like a completely insane cheat code for the patent process.
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