I'm speculating a bit here... but I think not very much. I think that our community will need to start thinking soon about changes in the way we manage our money.
Consider these developments.
1) For a long time LL has collected VAT on transactions in SL from rl people in those countries to which it applies. Earlier this year they've started collecting USA (and I think Canadian as well) sales tax from rl people in those countries... like me.
2) Paypal announced earlier this year ( https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2021-1 ... s-Answered ) that it will begin sending IRS 1099-K forms to anyone receiving more than US$600 in their Paypal account. A LOT of SL transactions use Paypal. People receiving such forms will need to show that income on their tax filings.
3) And now, this: https://www.tilia.io/press/tilia-secure ... -jp-morgan Tilia, one of the smarter moves that LL has made in recent years, is teaming up with one of the world's largest credit card payment processors. "Strategic investment" is all well and good, but read closely.
"In addition to the investment, Tilia is also working with J.P. Morgan Payments to enhance its current capabilities throughout its processing platform including providing increased payment and payout methods, expanding pay-out currencies and support services."
So please sit back quietly and meditate on these developments. Yes, the financial transactions in SL and between SL<>RL may run more smoothly, dependably. But they are becoming increasingly inter-connected to RL money systems. Why? Because the governments that structure all our lives want their share. If money flows from one person to another, the government that can claim jurisdiction wants their taxes from the receiving person. And at this point at least (and this MAY change, but I don't see it changing for a long time), that jurisdiction is over the citizenship identification of the rl person behind the avatar account.
Now let me be clear. At this point in time, October 2022, rl governments have not ventured into purely in-world, $L configured, transactions. Sales tax, and income reporting from Paypal, are on transactions which interconnect the L$ currency system to the rl currency system. I pay tier to LL in US$s (now plus sales tax), and some residents in SLNE pay tier to me via Paypal in US$s. Governments are looking only so far into the virtual world currency networks.
But let's not kid ourselves, and let's keep that new partnership with JP Morgan clearly in mind. Governments know that many millions of $$s changes hands in virtual worlds... SL being perhaps the least of them. And as I said, LL made a smart move in forming Tilia... they want in to the future exploding business of payments processing in all virtual worlds. It is NOT a very hard stretch of the imagination to consider rl governemnts' attention to transactions on SL Marketplace, or attention to our avatar transaction accounts. RL governments will want a piece of those transactions.
I'm going on about this here, because for our entire existence we have prided ourselves as a democratic community defined entirely within the framework of SL... an entirely "virtual" enterprise. The single anomaly we have faced and never entirely solved is the need to have an avatar account own our sims, with inescapably a rl name behind that account. But that aside, everything else about our community is structured purely within the virtual confines. And, consistent with that, the only money that flows in or out of our treasury in the rl currency system is the tier payments to LL (which of course we are now forced to pay sales tax on... an additional expense).
But I predict that will change. Someday... and these things often happen sooner than we expect... Rudeen Edo's (our Estate Owner account) rl person will be forced to declare the earnings from tier payments to her to the US government for her annual tax filings. This will present huge problems, and basically break our current system for managing our finances. We would have to re-structure.
We have, from time to time over the years, floated the idea of forming as a rl non-profit. This was never moved on for a HUGE batch of reasons, primary of which was our commitment to the "entirely virtual enterprise" noted above. RL non-profits are horrible administrative complexities (please understand... my rl person manages 4 or them and has a career of doing their finances). But a rl non-profit is the shape of what we are... we are a democratic "government" (generally defined as non-profit), or perhaps we are a community "cooperative" (also usually defined as a non-profit). There are other non-profit models that we might fit.
But non-profits incur huge administrative and rl person responsibilities. They must have Boards of rl people. They must file annual filings (basically tax returns with no taxes) in the US at least with the IRS, the state, and sometimes the city governments. I am going to strongly suspect that most CDS community members will be profoundly reluctant to get involved with something like this.
But it would solve our problem going forward. An immediate benefit would be that LL could no longer charge us sales tax. And although we would not have to pay taxes on our income, we would have to begin filing those annual returns. I'm going to leave that whole topic open. It entirely depends on what happens next in our virtual world.
Sudane.................
