It's only been mentioned three times in two pages, so it's pretty clear to see why you'd have missed it. :-| I know. Which is why he should have been fined for the theft of her commodities in addition to that. I didn't 'miss' anything, you just misinterpreted what I said. I know he didn't actually receive any penalty for the theft of her RS stuff. I am saying that the sum total of his fine should have at least matched the value of what he stole. I disagree with the court not fining the guy for the theft of virtual goods as I view them in exactly the same way as physical commodities, as my previous post explains. Which is why a £100 fine seems low to me. By this logic, should the 'commodities' we earn in-game not be subject to taxation, since they allegedly have a real value and therefore qualify as a source of income? Or... we could just accept that all in-game items remain owned by Jagex and avoid a lot of complications. Baring in mind that RS gold only has a value when you sell it, which involves breaching the terms and conditions of playing the game. RS Gold has a real cash value whether you are interested in selling it or not. For the sake of argument let's say the price of eoc gold is £0.15/M. If you have 500M then it is worth approximately £75 whether you intend to sell it or not. If I have no intentions of selling my Sony stocks or my gold bullion (I wish I actually owned these things), those things still have a value. Virtual currency is no different. You don't pay tax on commodities you own, you only pay tax on your income from those commodities. If I had a pile of gold bars sitting in my room, I wouldn't pay tax on them as I derive no income from them. Same with a pile of RSGP. It is only when you sell those items - real or virtual - that you obtain a taxable income from them, although that does not stop those items from having a value. Whilst I don't dispute that all in game items are owned by Jagex, Jagex has shown a remarkably small interest in preventing the sale of those items. Less than 100 people have been banned for RWT in the past 12 months; and at a conservative estimate, of the order of tens of thousands of unique accounts have bought or sold virtual items for real currency in the last year using the most popular black market site alone. More likely that number is far higher. Until Jagex show more interest in taking action against people selling items they own, the fact that they own them is effectively irrelevant in the same way that a law enforced in fewer than 1% of cases would be irrelevant. You would have to sell a substantial amount of gp in order for it to become taxable. That's providing you declare it of course - I think you can store £20,000 in a paypal account. We're talking over 120B gp of gold at the price you said. If you bought and sold you would have to sell even more for it to become taxable. I think a bigger issue would be if you were able to sell over £75,000 of it. You would legally have to charge VAT on all UK sales. But I think that if you could even get to that point would only be applicable to the difference of price bought/sold. Example if you bought £100 worth and sold for £105. Then £5 would be vatable making £6 the gross amount.
