Christine Kim, a Harvard legal scholar and professor of law at Yeshiva University, recently published a research paper detailing the arguments for not just taxing virtual universes, but seeing them as laboratories for experimenting with cutting-edge policies.
In the paper, dubbed simply Taxing the Metaverse, Kim argues that the Metaverse allows participants to create and accumulate wealth entirely within its ecosystem.
The paper goes on to explain that the virtual world’s ability to record all digital activity and track personal wealth means that the government can track and tax income as soon as it is received, which could change the status quo of US tax law.