Here Comes the Taxman!

July 11th, 2006 Jun Sok Huhh

I saw a strikingly shocking article(in Korean) at a newspaper about tax agency’s plan on RMT markets in Korea. Recently, many articles on Korean game markets has been delivered in English, but this one not yet.

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A man concerned in Seoul Tax Service said that his office has done its investigation about the outlook of RMT in many Korean online games. According to him, “this is not tax audits, but just the investigation to gather relating data.” Also, he commented that whether taxation on RMT or not “will be determined at the level of main office(National Tax Service) after hearing many experts’ opinion.”

These attempts might be to get a decisive step for taxation upon many kinds of RMT, also would be another effective measure to eradicate illegal RMT activities from Korean online game scene.
Since RMT has been on grey area between the legal and the illegal, there is few punishment or regulation on RMT activities. One specialist of taxation said, “For this is a long arranged case, there would be some special actions on RMT markets in cooperation with Nation Prosecutors’ Office.”

Online game industries are welcoming the unvailed plan of NTS. They have been strongly against RMT by their business rules, but also have been blamed for causing many social problems. They expected that if not only individual dealer but RMT sweatshops would be pushed by this measure, RMT and many anti-social crimes around it could naturally shrinks.

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Personally, I'm really embarassed by this news. I'll post my own comment on this news.

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