Silke Penner Virtuelle Wirtschaftsgüter
– ein Ansatz zur einkommen­steuerlichen Erfassung von Einkünften aus virtuellen Welten –

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The taxation of income from virtual worlds has so far been neither legally regulated nor academically analysed to an adequate degree in Germany. Ever since it was revealed in 2006 that a teacher from Germany earned the equivalent of over 1 million US dollars by selling virtual properties in the virtual world Second Life, it has, however, been quite clear that this income should also be subject to tax. The intuitive idea that income can only be considered to have been realised for tax purposes when it has completed the move to the real world is proving to be inadequate. The tax relevance of income in the form of virtual assets is justified on the basis that they can be directly or indirectly exchanged for real currencies, assets or services and can be separated from the user account. When income is generated in this form it can be distinguished from in-game assets which are of no relevance for tax.

The aim of the paper is to investigate whether German income tax law, as it exists, is prepared for the inclusion of income which is generated inside virtual worlds.

This paper considers three typical cases of virtual worlds:

• Bitcoin as a virtual real-world network,
• Second Life as a virtual parallel world
• and World of Warcraft as a virtual gaming world.

In addition to clarifying the research question, an academic contribution has been made by the development of a generally applicable testing scheme, which can also be used for the assessment of similar questions.

Against the background of the increasing significance for society which is given to virtual worlds in particular and to questions of digitisation in general, the clarification of the applicability of income tax law to questions of this type is also relevant with regard to the funding of the national budget, so it deserves intensive academic analysis.