kdb148

Actually, you do, at least for it to be income in the sense that the IRS defines it. You would not be taxed until you cashed out. Just like you don't owe taxes on a capital gain until the asset is sold, even though it may gain value for several years before you actually sell it. Income cannot be taxed until it is "realized," a term of art which basically means that income can't be taxed until the tangible benefit of it is claimed by the person entitled to it. No, they don't, and I already explained why that's not an appropriate comparison. The act of making or giving someone 1k steel bars does not automatically give rise to tangible, realized income like providing a professional service does. If coins were handled by RS in a manner that automatically credited/debited your bank accout with whatever amounts you traded, then I would agree with you. But the reason professional services were targeted by claiming bartered services as income is because providing professional services to someone outside your immediate family is a transaction for real life money. Always. Transactions in Runescape are not. That's where the analogy breaks down. But that's different than a Runescape trade as I stated above. You can break virtually any transaction between people in business, leisure, or any other relationship into these terms. I'm not arguing that this can be done, but that for tax puposes, the transactions in Runescape are not analogous to the real-life bartering situation. It doesn't have to. Courts have interpreted bartering as creating income for both parties specifically because of the nature of the services provided, and the fact that they dodge income tax. It's a construct of the courts later codified to satisfy the IRS that people aren't dodging income taxes. That doesn't mean that it automatically extends to any transaction, real-world or otherwise, that can be broken down and expressed as a real-world cash transaction. Everything from your wife or mom cooking breakfast for you to your buddy giving you a ride to the store can be expressed as a purely dollars and cents transaction. That doesn't mean you've received income for it, or that it should be taxed. Bartering is simply a special case where it is.

Yes it is. The IRS isn't taxing the game of poker. It's taxing the income made off of that game. There is a big difference between the two. If you and I were to play poker without betting, the IRS wouldn't tax our game. It's the same thing with RS. If you go and "cash out" by selling items for real-world cash, then you have to pay taxes on that income. But if you simply make a trade of in-game resources, then there's nothing you've done that is taxable. The lack of a market value isn't really an issue. Clearly, it would be pretty simple to assign a real-world dollar value for just about everything. All you have to do is look at what RS coins sell for in cash, track the market values of in-game resources, and multiply the two. It wouldn't even take that long to at least ballpark the real-world value of the more widely traded resources in RS. It's not as strange, no, considering the actual dollar amounts involved. But in those games, it's much more analagous to investment income than it is to bartering. The leisure/professional services distinction I made is important here, because the point of bartering is that a person was able to get a service they themselves were incapable of doing themselves, like plumbing or dental work. By paying with a service of their own, both people were able to receive what in many cases is a very expensive service, and since money never changed hands, both parties to the barter transaction received value for their service that wasn't being taxed. The difference with games like RS is that the things that each party receives in a trade isn't a unique service that they would have to otherwise pay real-world money in order to recieve. For example, say I want an abyssal whip. I could probably go on the web somewhere and pay, say, $15 for one. Or I could save up 2 million coins and buy one. Or I could train my slayer to 85 and kill abyssal demons for one. However, if I want my house rewired, or my teeth cleaned, I can't do it myself (unless I happen to be an electrician or a very flexible dentist). I have to pay money for it, creating income for the person providing the service. The big difference between the two is that, in the game scenario, I can get that thing, the abyssal whip, without creating a taxable event for the person I buy it from, and I can even go and get one myself. In the real world, there is no way around creating a taxable event to pay for certain services. That's the big difference between in-game trades and real-life exchange of services.

Well, bartering is something of a special case. And it's kind of absurd to think the IRS would go after such transactions as bartering. There are probably millions of trades made in RS alone every day - even if the IRS could compel Jagex to provide them with data about each and every one of those trades, the IRS would have to employ teams of people just to pore over that data to ensure that RS players are picking up their fair share of the tax burden. One of the articles you cited points out that the rules on bartering were instituted to close a loophole in the tax code. As it stands now, there's not really a way to game the system, especially in a game like RS that doesn't encourage real world trading. Not only that, but it doesn't fit the definition of bartering to begin with. Bartering has to do with professional-type services - RS is a leisure time activity, and all the items and coins in players' banks right now is the product of their leisure time. Think about that - once you start going in and taxing games, what next? You could just as easily argue that, for example, sexual intercourse is simply a barter of services. Certainly a dollar market exists, and it wouldn't be too terribly difficult to ascertain the value of those services. The point is, leisure activities aren't part of what the IRS or courts intended to bring under the purview of the tax code when those rulings were handed down. Like many provisions, it was done simply to ensure that people weren't able to mask income as something else.

It is rather questionable whether people who do not participate in RMT do not generate 'income'. If the in-game resources you make in the game have a fair market value you are actually having an income - income is not defined as "only dollar income". I believe this is partially what the IRS is researching. But the IRS can't collect taxes on income related to an asset appreciating in value until that income is actually realized, i.e. the asset is sold. Say you buy 100 shares of a stock today for $10 per share. Tomorrow, the stock goes up to $11 per share. You don't suddenly owe taxes on the $100 you just made - unless you sell the stock. The IRS really does only tax dollar income. They give out breaks often times for unrealized losses, for example a landlord gets to deduct the depreciation of the building he owns every year, even though he won't take that loss until the building is sold. But it doesn't work in reverse. By definition, the IRS taxes INCOME, and income from assets isn't realized until that asset is sold. If you don't make a tangible real-life profit, in dollars, there is nothing for the IRS to tax, at least as far as income is concerned.

To clear up a few things here: It doesn't matter what age you are, if you make income in the US, you are required to pay income tax on it, no matter how you get that income. Obviously there are many exceptions to that basic rule in the hundreds of pages of tax codes, but the fact remains that a 15 year old kid has to pay taxes if he earns money. Now, unless he is making a ridiculous amount of money for a 15 year old, chances are good that he won't have to pay income tax at all as the standard deduction will more than cover his tax liability. But he still has to report his income to the IRS, and can be subject to income taxation if he makes enough money. What this basically means is that, if you make a profit off of an MMORPG, you must report it to the US government if you reside in the US. This would include RS, even though it is against the game rules. So techincally, a macroer living in the US who sells RS coins for real life money is breaking US tax laws by not reporting that income to the government. However, the article completely misses the point of US tax laws. Making money in RS for most of us is not taxable income, since we aren't selling our in-game resources for real life money. RS users who don't break these rules aren't making an income and can't be taxed. This would be much more relevant to games that encourage real-life trading, and likely the US government would want the people running the real-life marketplaces for online game stuff to monitor transactions, not the people running the game itself. All of this, of course, is irrelevant to Jagex for the most part. One way Jagex could be impacted would be the US government requiring them to report all known information about anyone caught macroing to the government, for investigation of possible sales for real-world profit. But there is no way the US government can tax purely in-game trades.

There's really no point in being able to steal from gem stalls. They respawn really slow. I would recommend getting 60 or 65 thieving to do the rogue's den safes, and you might need 50 agility too. I don't get why Jagex made thieving from gem stalls possibl, and then created something literally 10 times faster and better exp for getting gems, but there ya have it.

Try looking in world 1 varrock.

I had a similar streak, only I kept getting tons of minds and no deaths.

I have a friend who went to 99, until I informed him that he'll get traded just as fast by going into the law altar on 66.

Assuming you don't mine your own ores, there are very few choices. Buying iron bars 200ea and making knives is one. Buying ingredients and smelting steel/mith bars is another. Buying steel bars for cballs is a third option. Those are about the only ways to smith and make money; all of them are slow, with iron knives probably the fastest of the 3.

Please don't try to cheat and then look for sympathy when it backfires.

No, Chaos Druids only drop 1 at a time. If you can kill Aberrant Specters, I would advise doing that. Herbs + herb seeds = good herblore training.

This is good advice. You can sell the ores to the shop right near there, too. Good way to train and make a bit of money, and it's way faster than banking.

I don't think the thread starter realizes that it's pretty slow to level regardless of what you kill.

Fly fishing at Shilo is much, much faster than sharks or monkfish. So if it's just levels you're after, do that.

No they aren't, just go to the waterfall fire giants.

Plates are better because you can smith them much faster, but the XP per bar is the same no matter what you make.

You really don't know what you're doing if you got pked that many times running to the abyss.

Because of how slow they are to make, cballs are really slow exp. They're decent cash, but not worth it IMO because the exp is so slow.

I would recommend for enchanting just to do it for maximum exp, and eventually you will get all the pizzazz you need.

Tip.it's bestiary is wrong about that, I'm pretty sure.

Certainly the Burthorpe assignments will be doable by melee without messing with his combat level. Most of the slayer cave monsters can't be ranged - jellies, cockatrices, or basilisks must all be meleed I think, but all those can be Burthorped, and you can successfully range turoths. As for the tower, I'm not sure about crawling hands, and Banshees can be ranged but it can be a challenge to get them in the right spot. Infernal mages can be ranged, though they will be hitting you with magic regardless. You can range bloodvelds very easily.

Ring of life at Barrows, baby!

The point is that maybe some people think PC is a lot of fun, but would like to get some xp in non-combat skills while playing there. There's a lot more to RS than just cash.

He's not on that list, though. Why is that?