Category: News Feeds

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Amanda M. Fisher back to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.

We were exhausted before the pandemic isolated us — before we were hiding in home offices, bedrooms, bathrooms, or closets for a few minutes of quiet — before we were juggling caretaking on top of working and fear, without being able to compartmentalize. Now, nearly a year in, a collective exhaustion has settled over everyone. Women have suffered more than men during this pandemic, but women of color have borne the brunt of the pandemic’s collateral effects. We are more than tired, more than betrayed — we are having an identity crisis.

Every individual’s identity consists of various roles — little bits forming the whole of who we are. Identity Theory relies on a self-categorization process and centers on an individual’s various roles. Although these roles are often self-selected, they also reflect societal expectations. The result is that our identity is partly how we view ourselves and partly how we think society views us based on outward expectations.

Think about how you would respond to the question, “Who are you?” I would respond that I am a mother, a lawyer, a professor, a spouse, a student — the list could go on for quite some time. My response would be curated based on who was asking the question. What does this person need to know about me, and in what order should I list my roles based on my goals for this conversation? This ordering of roles is related to identity salience.

At its most basic form, identity salience refers to how important one role or identity is to an individual within a specific context. As context changes, salience changes. For example, when teaching law students, my role as professor is most salient, with my role as lawyer a close second. Spending time with my son, my role as mother is most salient. I think of this as my own personal deck of cards that make up my identity. Each card has one role. I can choose which card to play based on the situation I am in. When my context changes (e.g., work versus home), I can change cards as needed.

Role shuffling is not necessarily difficult when external forces change our contexts. The office, the classroom, at home — these are places where society largely dictates who we are within those bounds and which role will be most salient.

But what happens when our contexts converge? When every role happens in the same place because we are working from home, our kids are learning from home, and we do not have the ability to create contextual space between our roles?

For many women, the pandemic consolidated everything at once. The kids are home (Mom), the work emails are flooding in (Lawyer), the students are panicking about midterms (Professor), and the spouses are asking about what groceries we need (Spouse). This means we are no longer able to shuffle through our identity deck of cards to remove and replace roles as needed. Instead, we are carrying the entire deck of cards, face up, all of the time, and we barely know who we are anymore. We are in survival mode, and we have been for nearly a year.

So, what now?

We need to find ways to create contextual space between our roles. We need to be able to focus, separately, on our obligations if we have any hope of preserving our sense of self as the pandemic wears on. We cannot continue to carry our roles and identities stacked on top of one another. The deck is too heavy. We need space to shuffle them, to set them down from time to time, and we need structures that allow us to do that. We need change, and we need it immediately.

1. Personal Support Systems: Not everyone has the privilege of a personal support system (spouse, family, friends), but for those who do, we need to call on them. When we do call on them, we need those systems to respond, to come to our aid. It is hard enough to ask, so let’s all be supportive and encouraging in ways that seem extraordinary. Send a meal over to a neighbor or friend who is juggling more than usual. Offer to help with childcare if you can safely do so with the people who are in your pandemic bubble. Encourage one another to prioritize rest.
2. Employers: If employers are aware of this identity crisis, they can help employees create space between roles. Flexibility, for example, might be possible in this virtual environment even if it was not an option before the world shifted. Employers might consider allowing varied work hours rather than traditional schedules. Another consideration might be allowing employees to choose a part-time package, temporarily or permanently, based on the employees’ needs. Finally, employees need to know that employers do not expect them to work around the clock and that sustaining boundaries is encouraged. After all, working mothers make better employees.

The pandemic has set women’s progress in the workforce back by decades. It will take significant effort and prioritization, by individuals and institutions, to get back to where we were in 2019. Working mothers are in crisis, and if we crumble, society’s scaffolding will fall.

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Amanda M. Fisher is an Associate Attorney at Richardson | Ober | DeNichilo LLP and a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of California, Irvine in Criminology, Law & Society. She is researching gendered stigma in the legal profession in the southern United States. If you are a Florida attorney, you can participate in Amanda’s research here. Amanda is also a Visiting Assistant Professor at WMU-Cooley Law School in Tampa, Florida. You can follow her on Twitter or reach her via email at fishera@cooley.edu.

The growing legalization of cannabis has attracted many celebrities to this flourishing and lucrative market. Yet, two of these personalities have shown their commitment to the cannabis industry extends beyond money. Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and Dwayne Carter Jr., better known as “Lil Wayne,” recently launched social justice programs that are setting the stage for responsible entrepreneurship.

Jay-Z’s Bold Campaign Against National Drug Policy

In 2019, Jay-Z entered the world of cannabis by partnering with California cannabis company Caliva to develop MONOGRAM, a premium-priced luxury marijuana line that features $40 to $70 hand-rolled joints.

But Jay-Z is more than a billionaire entrepreneur who develops brands and business strategy, he also leads MONOGRAM’s social justice program, which recently launched a bold nationwide awareness campaign that challenges cannabis laws and denounces their disproportionate and devastating impact on communities of color.

The campaign consists, in part, of billboards and digital series featuring provoking factual headlines set against the backdrop of the portraits of eight individuals who have been negatively affected by the War on Drugs/Marijuana. The campaign also aims to show how archaic these regulations are by comparing them to immoral and depraved actions, such as cannibalism, which remain legal in certain states. Examples of MONOGRAM’s bold campaign messages include:

• “Weed is a federal crime. Even in the states where sex with farm animals isn’t.”
• “The legal term for bribing a politician is often called lobbying. The legal term for possession of weed is often called felony.”
• “You can marry your first cousin in more states than you can buy recreational weed.”
• “The war on drugs worked. If systemic racism was the goal.”

Beyond high-impact static visuals, MONOGRAM also announced it would introduce visual testimonials from its eight featured individuals, sharing their personal journey through excessive punishment for cannabis offenses and discussing ways in which these unfair practices have irreversibly damaged their lives.

Through this social justice campaign, MONOGRAM aims to magnify the hypocrisy of existing cannabis legislation, which for nearly 45 years have unduly targeted and punished communities of colors. Since the 1970s, the enforcement of marijuana possession laws has been carried out with staggering racial bias. According to a 2020 report published by the ACLU, nearly half of all drug arrests made in 2010 were for marijuana possession. Although marijuana use was roughly the same among Blacks and whites, Blacks were 3.64 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession.

In addition to bringing the relationship between marijuana prohibition and racial injustice into national spotlight, MONOGRAM is also working on reversing course in this disastrous and racist War on Drugs/Marijuana. The company has funded a $10 million social equity ventures program that will provide Black and other minority entrepreneurs equal opportunity for participation in the legal cannabis industry.

Lil Wayne ‘Shares the Love’ and Money with Cannabis Reform Nonprofit

Like Jay-Z, Lil Wayne launched his cannabis company, GKUA Ultra Premium, in 2019, which offers a line of high-potency marijuana products but also contributes to social justice reforms.

In February, GKUA partnered with Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cannabis criminal justice reforms, to bring about awareness to the thousands of people incarcerated for nonviolent cannabis offenses through the “Share the Love” social campaign.

To support Last Prison Project’s initiatives, GKUA pledged to donate $1 to the organization for every Instagram user who shared a photo of themselves or of loved ones enjoying cannabis on the social media platform between February 12 and February 14.

Whether one approves of MONOGRAM and GKUA’s bold and thought-provoking campaigns, no one can deny that these companies are setting the stage for responsible entrepreneurship. They are bravely taking the lead in correcting and redressing the wrongs against Black and other minority groups by investing resources in these marginalized communities and providing them with an opportunity to reclaim their place in an industry built on their backs. Now one can only hope that these remarkable initiatives will inspire other cannabis entrepreneurs (including white entrepreneurs) to join and participate in these social justice and cannabis reform efforts.

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Nathalie practices out of Harris Bricken’s Portland office and focuses on the regulatory framework of hemp-derived CBD (“hemp CBD”) products. She is an authority on FDA enforcement, Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act and other laws and regulations surrounding hemp and hemp CBD products. She also advises domestic and international clients on the sale, distribution, marketing, labeling, importation and exportation of these products. Nathalie frequently speaks on these issues and has made national media appearances, including on NPR’s Marketplace. For two consecutive years, Nathalie has been selected as a “Rising Star” by Super Lawyers Magazine, an honor bestowed on only 2.5% of eligible Oregon attorneys.  Nathalie is also a regular contributor to her firm’s Canna Law Blog.

The nationally-recognized practice group of our client is looking to add a mid-level corporate associate to their Boston office.

The ideal candidate will have 3-6 years of sophisticated corporate/transactional experience from a top law firm.

Additional corporate/regulatory experience within the cannabis industry is highly preferred. Contact us at jobs@kinneyrecruiting.com to be considered or apply here!

Didn’t find what you were looking for? See more job postings from Kinney Recruiting here.

Decades, it seems, can pass between readings of the standard boilerplate inserted into every debt agreement. After all, this language has been honed by the finest transactional lawyers in the world; once they’re perfect, why change them, or even look at them when copying and pasting from the last one to the next one? It’s perfect, airtight, until it is not, because, as it turns out, some hedge fund managers are cleverer than decades’ worth of diligent contract attorneys, and some clients are far, far stupider than those same attorneys could have possibly imagined.

Sit down, this one’s a doozy. In an incident that could only happen in our Zoom world, two law professors at Georgetown University Law Center were recorded analyzing the performance of a Black student in a class they jointly teach. It’s, well… it’s something else.

Most of the speaking goes to Professor Sandra Sellers while Professor David Batson just seems to nod in agreement, but, wow, is this some shocking stuff. Anyway, here it goes:

“You know what? I hate to say this…”

[Don’t worry, she’s going to anyway]

“I end up having this, you know, angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks. Happens almost every semester. And it’s like, oh come on, you know? There are some really good ones, but there are also some that are just plain at the bottom and drives me crazy.”

You can watch the clip for yourself.

The Georgetown Black Law Students Association’s statement (with the support of a number of other campus student groups, other BLSA chapters, and GULC students) on the incident calls out the attitudes of Sellers as being specifically harmful to, not only the specific Black student they were discussing, but all Black students Sellers has ever taught:

These racist statements reveal not only Sellers’ beliefs about Black students in her classes, but also how her racist thoughts have translated to racist actions. Professor Sellers’s bias has impacted the grades of Black students in her classes historically, in her own words.

And they don’t absolve Batson for his role in the video:

Further, the other professor in the video, David Batson, initially nodded in agreement with several of Sellers’ statements. Batson subsequently stated that, “what drives [him] crazy is…the concept of how that plays out in whether that is [his] own perceptions playing in here with certain people” or “[his] own unconscious biases playing out in the scheme of things.” While these comments certainly show more awareness than that of Professor Sellers, his actions were still altogether insufficient to address the blatant racism that he was an audience to. He had an obligation to report her, and he did not. We demand that Batson publicly apologize for his role in enabling and supporting Sellers’ behavior.

BLSA’s demands include firing Sellers and an apology from Batson:

We demand that Georgetown Law take action in the form of:

1. The immediate termination of  Professor Sandra Sellers;
2. requiring a public apology from Professor David Batson in his failure to adequately condemn Sellers’ statements;
3. critically assessing and improving its current subjective grading system, including an audit of Professor Sellers’ past grading and student evaluations to account for her admitted biases; and
4. committing to hiring more Black professors who will be better situated to fairly assess Black students in a non-biased manner.

My former colleague, Elie Mystal, is not super optimistic about the chances of real consequences being handed out, seeing as there’s a long history of law school professors getting away with… some awful shit while wrapping themselves in the cloak of academic freedom. And BLSA’s letter calls out Georgetown’s own record of (not) dealing with a professor who used the n-word in class (while teaching at a different law school, but still associated with GULC).

I pretty much always think “academic freedom” is trotted out in these situations to absolve people with “impressive” resumes of racism. But I can imagine/naively hope it won’t gain much traction here. After all, Sellers’s comments were not in furtherance of an academic point or scholarship but rather some offensive race-based musings she mistakenly believed were transmitted privately to a sympathetic audience of one. (And arguments that use racism in service to supposedly neutral “scholarship” are probably worse than the problematic views expressed here — since Sellers is at least saying that it causes her “angst,” which, compared to the Amy Wax awfulness is actually an improvement — but my main point is that Sellers would be hard pressed to used “academic freedom” to escape responsibility in this case.)

Let’s see what the law school has to say about all this. Dean William Treanor released a statement (available in full on the next page) acknowledging how hurtful the entire incident has been, and promising to respond “with the utmost seriousness” and noting that the University’s Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity & Affirmative Action will begin an investigation:

We learned earlier this week that two members of our faculty engaged in a conversation that included reprehensible statements concerning the evaluation of Black students. We are responding with the utmost seriousness to this situation. I have watched a video of this conversation and find the content to be abhorrent. It includes conduct that has no place in our educational community. We must ensure that all students are treated fairly and evaluated on their merits.

We are taking this incident extremely seriously. Upon hearing of it, I immediately engaged the University’s Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity & Affirmative Action, which is undertaking a thorough investigation. The Law School is also pursuing additional responses and will act swiftly and seriously to address this incident.

Well, it’s not great that it opens up acknowledging the law school was aware of the incident, but made no statement until it went viral. Hopefully (again, perhaps naively), something will be done — and quickly — about this disturbing incident and the racist beliefs it illuminated.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

* The NBA players’ association and other professional athlete associations filed an amicus brief yesterday to support college athletes in a Supreme Court case. From the basketball court to the Supreme Court… [Sports Illustrated]

* Boies Schiller had a very challenging year in 2020. [American Lawyer]

* Check out this inspiring story of a person who went from homelessness to being an attorney. [Texas Lawyer]

* Two Georgetown Law faculty members are in hot water for seemingly making racist comments on a recorded Zoom call earlier this week. [Georgetown Law]

* A paraplegic inmate has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was denied a shower in a St. Louis jail for five months. [People]

* Facebook has field a motion seeking to dismiss an antitrust lawsuit filed against the platform. Heart reaction… [Bloomberg Law]

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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

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Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!

According to Law.com’s Go-To Law School Ranking, what percentage of Columbia Law School’s class of 2020 began their careers in Biglaw?

Hint: CLS takes the top spot — for the 8th year in a row — on the Go-To list which ranks law schools by those working in Biglaw. The percentage of Columbia grads heading to Biglaw is down slightly from 2019, but still six percentage points over the number 2 law school — Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.

See the answer on the next page.

This past week, three men broke the internet by publicly telling their story as the first polyamorous throuple (like a couple, but with three people) to all be legally named as parents of the same children. A California court named Ian Jenkins and both of his male partners as legal parents of their two children. Jenkins has a book out on their experience — Three Dads and a Baby: Adventures in Modern Parenting.

Is this new?

Yes and no. California has permitted more than two parent families by statute since 2013. However, a particularly unique characteristic of the Jenkins’ ruling, aside from his polyamorous relationship (versus other forms of three-parent families that have been recognized) is that the dads received their rulings pre-birth of the children. Pursuant to California surrogacy law, and as is customary in many states, a court rules on the parentage of a child carried by a surrogate during the pregnancy. Jenkins described how the judge hesitated with their first child to set a new precedent by declaring three men to have parental rights to the same child before the birth. However, the judge was persuaded in an emotional hearing that it would have been wrong to leave any one of the dads off the birth certificate or to deny him parental rights. When their second child came along, no hearing was needed to come to the same decision.

What About Four Parents?

Of course, families have been taking all sorts of forms since the beginning of time. These families just frequently lack legal recognition. This latest I Want To Put A Baby In You podcast interview tells the story of Colorado attorney, and founder of the Birth Rights Bar Association, Indra Lusero (pronouns they, their). Lusero was one of four (4!) parents to two children. And by that, I mean each child had four parents. And that swelled to six depending on how you counted.

Lusero’s youngest recently turned 18. They described the sense of relief with the children becoming adults — now the fears they carried as to legal interference into their family, or one or more of the parents being denied parental rights, could be released. Unlike Jenkins and his partners, Lusero’s family never received legal recognition that matched the reality and intentions of the parents.

Lusero describes how their initial dreams for a family were formed in college. Together, with Lusero’s then girlfriend and their close gay friend, they planned out a family where all three would be parents. Later, when their gay friend fell in love and became partnered, the agreement transformed to having four parents. Having a fourth parent, Lusero described, frankly made the split in parenting time an easier calculation. The four parents and children lived in a duplex with an internal door connecting each side. Fifty percent of parenting time went to the dads and 50% to Indra and their partner, and the kids got to stay in their same bedrooms.

I asked about birth certificates and school forms. Lusero described that without the legal flexibility at that time to recognize the full form of their family, it was just easier to have the biologically related parents named on the birth certificates. That meant Lusero’s partner and their gay friend on one birth certificate, and Lusero (who conceived through at-home insemination and carried the second pregnancy) and their gay friend on the second birth certificate. Due to Lusero’s meaningful connection to their Hispanic heritage and insistence, both children were given the Lusero last name.

If Lusero’s family was formed today, instead of more than 18 years ago, would the legal recognition have been different?

Maybe. But also maybe not. Colorado, where Lusero’s children were born, has yet to statutorily expand its parentage law to explicitly permit more than two parents. However, Seth Grob, Colorado adoption and assisted reproductive technology legal expert, argues that there is no statutory prohibition for judicial recognition of more than two parents to a child in Colorado. “There is dicta in published Colorado Court of Appeals cases that frowns about the notion of more than two parents, but the issue has yet to be addressed head on in any precedent-setting opinion.” Grob explained that “there are clear arguments in favor of a child having more than two parents, including those on public policy grounds. For example, expanding the number of legal parents a child may have expands those with legal and financial responsibility for that child.” “It also allows children to have inheritance benefits through more than two parents.” So while there is still little movement in Colorado to expect Lusero’s family would have legal protection if formed today, there are certainly valid arguments in favor of future progress.

How About Six Parents?

Eric Wrubel is a New York LGBTQ+ legal expert and recent co-founder of a new assisted reproductive technology practice for his firm, together with his new partner with expertise in surrogacy, Alexis Cirel. Since, incredibly, compensated surrogacy just became legal in New York on February 15, 2021. Wrubel argues that thanks to the evolution of multiple paths to legal recognition of parenthood, including biology, adoption, preconception agreement, equitable estoppel, judicial estoppel, and marital presumption, a child could have up to five or six parents under New York law. And New York courts have repeatedly proven willing to permit more than two parents to have legal recognition of parentage for the same child. Six would satisfy Lusero’s family well since they added additional adults to the constellation through break-ups and new partnerships.

Some jurisdictions, including California, Maine, and Washington, as well as Ontario, Canada, which provides for up to four parents, have explicitly included the flexibility of more than two parents into statutory law. For a deep dive on the legality of tri-parenting arrangements check out this article by assisted reproductive technology legal luminary Colleen M. Quinn.

Congrats to Jenkins and his family, and to the California courts for providing justified family protections, even when the family takes a form unfamiliar to many. Now we just need the rest of ours states’ laws and judicial systems to provide the flexibility and legal protections appropriate to each family.

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Ellen Trachman is the Managing Attorney of Trachman Law Center, LLC, a Denver-based law firm specializing in assisted reproductive technology law, and co-host of the podcast I Want To Put A Baby In You. You can reach her at babies@abovethelaw.com.

Most people play video games for entertainment. They play in a virtual world by themselves or with others where they rescue a princess or play in the virtual Super Bowl. But some people have made real money from their online activities, usually from selling virtual items.

Most video games do not have a mechanism to convert game currency into real money because they don’t create wealth. But many online games allow players to exchange real money for in-game currency which can be used to purchase virtual goods and services. For developers, it is a business model that serves as an alternative to charging a monthly subscription fee to its players. As I mentioned in a previous column, the IRS will not tax in-game activities in these closed virtual worlds.

But a few of these online massively multiplayer online games allow a two-way conversion of currencies. Not only can players convert real money into in-game virtual currency, but they can also convert it back to real money. There are two online games that do this: Second Life and Entropia Universe. Second Life has a currency called Lindens while Entropia Universe’s currency is called Project Entropia Dollars, or PEDs. The developers have no issues with players earning income from their platforms. And there have been stories of some people earning large amounts of money from selling virtual real estate or from their virtual businesses.

These virtual worlds with two-way convertible currencies produced a tax conundrum. If these currencies are cash equivalents, like foreign currencies, should they be taxed at receipt, even if the players do not cash them out? Most would agree that those who play for real world profit should report their virtual income. The problem is that most people play for fun and not to make money. If they spend the money only in the virtual world, it would be absurd to have to pay real world taxes on their virtual income.

Seven years ago, the Internal Revenue Service tried to address this when they issued Notice 2014-21. It was issued at a time when cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin started to rise in value. It stated that the sale or exchange of convertible virtual currency to pay for goods or services in a real-world economy transaction could result in a real-world tax liability. It also suggested that those who received virtual currencies would have to report its fair market value as taxable income. For example, those who received Bitcoin as a result of mining would have to report the receipt on their tax returns.

This could suggest that transactions involving in-game virtual currencies can result in real-world tax consequences. On the other hand, there are reasons why the notice should not apply to these currencies. The notice only uses Bitcoin as an example of convertible virtual currency. It does not mention Entropia Universe, Second Life, or any other virtual world based games with convertible currencies.

While both in-game currencies and Bitcoin can be converted to real world currency and vice versa, they operate differently. Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies operate in the real world as securities investment vehicles or as substitute currencies to obtain real world goods and services. On the other hand, game currencies like PEDs only exist in the Entropia Universe virtual world and they are mainly used to purchase in-game items. While it is possible to exchange PEDs for a large pizza, these transactions are rare. This is because most real-world stores do not accept PEDs since they cannot be used as a currency in the real world nor is there a large demand for them outside of the game. The only people who would engage in these types of transactions are Entropia Universe players.

Second, the game currencies are controlled by its developers while most cryptocurrencies are supposedly decentralized. Generally, the developers will tweak their currencies as needed to maximize revenue from its players and ensure that the in-game economy is not disrupted to the point where the game becomes unplayable. For example, one day, the developers might change the exchange rate so that one dollar can purchase five PEDs instead of ten. Or they can make PEDs easier or harder to get in the game. They can ban real-world transactions using PEDs (although enforcing this is probably easier said than done). So even though PEDs can be converted into real world money, the real world value is uncertain while it is in the game since the developers can change how the currency functions. Accordingly, the value should only be realized when the currency is cashed out.

Notice 2014-21 did not create a distinction between those who play online games for fun as opposed to those who play for profit. On one end of the spectrum, there is the person who plays for fun and uses their game currency exclusively in the game. These people should not be taxed on their in-game activities and should only pay taxes when they cash out. On the other, there are those who play for profit who will cash out their currency as often as they can and will only keep in-game currency to pay in-game costs. These people arguably should be taxed on the receipt of game currency since they see them as no different than real money.

But what about those in the middle? Where should the line between fun and profit be drawn? For example, someone who withdraws money only twice per year and puts the money back in the game later in the same year? Or someone who saves a large amount of game currency in order to purchase an expensive in-game item but later decides to quit the game and cash out instead? The potential scenarios are endless.

Drawing the line will be difficult because most, if audited, will argue that the taxable event occurs when they cash out, not when they receive the virtual currency. While some may be telling the truth about playing for fun, others won’t.

Until guidance is issued, these audits will be no different than a typical audit. The problem is that most older tax auditors are likely not familiar with online gaming and so will have a difficult time understanding every transaction that goes on in an online game. They only thing they will look at is the cash deposits. Also, most who play for fun are not likely to keep records of their online transactions, will not understand that there were tax consequences. Finally, they probably won’t be able to pay the tax due since the IRS does not accept tax payments in the form of Lindens and PEDs.

It is uncertain whether there will be more online games with two-way convertible currencies. But before the intricacies of the tax laws are applied to online game activities, there must be a way to separate out those who play for fun compared to those who play with a real world profit motive. The IRS’s Notice 2014-21 should only apply to cryptocurrency transactions and not to in-game currencies because the currencies behave differently. Those who play for fun are easy to spot as they do not cash out their virtual cash. Also, auditing them will be difficult and may result in an unfair outcome. In a future column, I will look at some proposed solutions to this tax conundrum.

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Steven Chung is a tax attorney in Los Angeles, California. He helps people with basic tax planning and resolve tax disputes. He is also sympathetic to people with large student loans. He can be reached via email at sachimalbe@excite.com. Or you can connect with him on Twitter (@stevenchung) and connect with him on LinkedIn.