You probably haven’t wondered whether the United States government will someday tax your virtual winnings from games played over the Internet, have you? The real question is, why hasn’t it happened already? Gamers who play EverQuest, an online game with 450,000 subscribers generate in their virtual world the kind of imaginary economic activity that can be measured in real-world terms like “gross domestic product.” If you look at online marketplaces like eBay, you will find a thriving, multimillion-dollar market in Golden Runic Hammers, Ethereal Mounts, and similarly exotic items in this or that MMO quest, and many of them fetching prices in the hundreds, even thousands of dollars. The rules make clear the IRS’s fundamental point: goods taken in trade or won at play are taxable the moment they fall into somebody’s hands, even if they are not sold for money.