Recently in EVE, a new gambling site has been launched. These sites have come and gone in the passed, but this one RLS-EVE is here to stay. They run the automated gambling site off software written by another EVE member (and it works flawlessly).

Now, I am not making huge bets when I play, as I am not much of a gambler (Black Jack I play, I am good at that, in RL that is) — Because this site is simply based on chance. IE: Who will lose a Titan next? And then there are several Alliance names that follow.

Now the question I am brining up is, do you think CCP and the Icelandic government will ever start charging people taxes for their wins? Right now when you win, you get a direct deposit to your EVE wallet, no tax (not even in game tax). The other night I put in 10,000,000ISK that Jade Constantine would win the CSM competition. She did, and I won 40,000,000ISK tax free.

Although the RL dollar amount is small, if I had placed more, I would have won more. There was a lot of money in the CSM pot.

One member in particular really got me thinking about the whole tax situation. His name is Curzon Dax, and he has approx. 840,000,000,000ISK. That’s 840 Billion. More than any whole Alliance I know of. He plays online poker in EVE, and he’s damn good at it. Some of the buy-ins alone are 10 Billion. Now this 840B he has won, has an approx. US dollar value of $82,000. ISK selling in EVE is illegal, but he could sell the ISK for GTC and then sell the GTC for US value. It is a long process, and finding buyers would be a bitch, but its legal as far as CCP is concerned. And he could do all of this, tax free.

Second Life also had some issues of online gambling, as I posted about over a year ago on a previous blog. The government wants to charge people who use Second Life Casino’s as they are making tons of US money. One case stood out to me when I spoke with a gentleman named “Spyder”. He has the most popular store in Second Life, which contains weapons, armor, lots of spike goth stuff, and many many other items. He makes them all himself, and they are VERY detailed. I spent $50 US there in one day, because everything was so amazing.

Spyder said he stopped working in RL long ago. Without being rude, I tried to ask him how much he accumulated that he could stop working in RL and focus all his time to Second Life. He said for security reasons he wouldn’t give me an exact number, but he could do $5000 a month, tax free. So he has an income of $60,000 a year. Technically, he is taxed when he has to file his taxes, but, if he works part time from somewhere, and doesn’t drive a fancy car, the government will never know he has such a large second income, and he can dodge the feds.

My main argument however, is the solid fact that I went into a Second Life casino one Friday night, put in $10 US, and walked away with $1,400 US direct deposit, tax free.

Your thoughts?

* RL = Real Life . CCP = CCP Games (Developer) . GTC = Game Time Card . CSM = Council for Stellar Management *

Consumers, Gaming, General, Politics, Software, Technology