P2E gamers, minors not any safer from the tax man, says Koinly

cointelegraph.com:

Modern parents are going to need to keep an even closer eye on their kids’ gaming habits, as some of them may be accumulating a hefty tax bill, according to a crypto tax specialist.

Speaking to Cointelegraph during last week’s Australian Crypto Convention, Adam Saville-Brown, regional head of tax software firm Koinly said that many don’t realize that earnings from play-to-earn (P2E) games can be subject to tax consequences in the same way as crypto trading and investing. 

This is particularly true for play-to-earn blockchain games that offer in-game tokens that can be traded on exchanges and thus have real-world financial value.

Saville-Brown said he was approached during the convention by a father of a nine-year-old son, concerned that his boy was “making bank” from P2E games.

“The nine-year-old kid…is mining, staking, creating Youtube and TikTok videos to the point that his dad had to bring him here today because he’s generating so much income,” Saville-Brown recounted to Cointelegraph.

However, the treatment of P2E game earnings — at least in Australia — can be complex.

Koinly’s Head of Tax Danny Talwar explained that in Australia if one is playing a game to earn income — they are considered as “running a business” and could face a “complicated” tax situation, noting: 

This is further complicated as the gamers could either be “playing these games as an investor” or “playing these games as a trader.”

According to the Australian Taxation Office, investors are subject to capital gains when they sell their assets, while traders doing the same thing would be seen as “trading stock in a business,” and thus any profits would be treated as ordinary income.

Talwar added that if users have “intentions to actually run as a business