Showing posts with label VAT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label VAT. Show all posts

Sunday, March 11, 2018

"Of A Certain Age"

You may not have noticed yet, but the laird has recently been published by Amazon. "The Book of Bock. Collected wisdoms and guidelines for life and social media presence for an avatar in postindustrial society. Part 1." Available in Kindle and hardcover for $6.24 (includes VAT).

"When an avatar if ´of a certain age' it is always best to photograph them in a harsh and brilliant lighting to obliterate and cover up any and all imperfections and blemishes that may have developed during their evolution. If nothing else helps take them to Chouchou." (BoB 2018, p 234)

To think that I would have to follow my own gentle guidelines when I was thinking about what picture to post for my eleventh rezday.

Oh my, can it really be true? I am older that dirt in SecondLife and Philip Linden must certainly have used me to rub the shit of his shoes after his first rezzing in-world.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Grandfathered

Our friends at Linden Lab recently offered those of us who rent sims from them a price reduction of the maintenance fees (a.k.a. tier).

According to the offer we can now "buy down" from a monthly tier of $295 to $195 with a one time payment of $600 before October 4th, 2016.

Today I have decided to avail myself of that generous offer and have submitted a ticket accordingly. As I am a resident of the European Union I will thereby reduce my monthly cost for Southern Charm by $125, due to the added benefit of a lower VAT surcharge.

Read the full offer from Linden Lab here: Want Lower Tier? Now You Can Get Grandfathered Land Rates!

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Tier

This is a comment to the present discussion in the Swedish SecondLife blogs concerning tier.

My tier for Southern Charm at the moment is L$ 5,55 per prim for four weeks (including the VAT-tax enforced by the European Union on all EU-citizens who rent directly from Linden Lab).

Without the European Union penalty tax for renting directly from the Lab my cost would be L$ 4,44 per prim and four weeks. To the best of my knowledge no one who rents from anyone other than Linden Lab ever gets hit by this deeply unfair tax.

(The interpretation of the reasons for the tax given above is mine, I am sure the bureaucrats in Brussels would describe the reasons differently.)

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Southern Charm

The view we fell in love with at Southern Charm
Soon after Ars and I became a couple back in December of 2007, we started to look for somewhere to live together and spent all Ars free time sim-jumping to search for a place we both liked.

We had made a joint list of criteria for what we were looking for.
  1. No boring beach property
  2. Affordable
  3. Big enough. i.e. with enough prims over after setting up the house.surroundings and furniture. to allow Ars to build without too many limitations
  4. A reliable and secure landlord - we had both heard too many stories about the other kind
Usually Ars would have prepared a list of places to check out beforehand and pretty soon after I logged inworld we were off on our hunt. We had a good time doing this and enjoyed being in each others company.

After about a week or so we first came to the Southern Charm sim, which seemed to meet with all our criteria except the affordable. I was the stingy one, after all the relationship with Ars was so fresh and I did not want to commit to something that could be difficult to pull out from if things turned sour.

We both fell in love with the house straddling the waterfall at once, so after seeing that we just kept coming back. Finally I gave in and we started negotiations with the landlord.

The sim was at that time owned by Spyder Jewell, but was managed by his wife Jazzine, a smart, funny and wonderful American woman.

Jazzine took to me as soon as I had made Ars question her about the "no nudity" clause in the covenant. Finally we made an explicit agreement stating that I (and Ars) could run around on our property as naked as we wished as long as we did not tote a boner outdoors and wore clothes when visiting with the neighbors.

With that essential point settled we started negotiations on how many parcels we were going to rent, which parcels and what the total tier would be. I had complete confidence in leaving Ars to handle that when I logged off that night.

Next day when I logged in Ars told me triumphantly that we were now the proud tenants of two parcels on Southern Charm, including the one with the waterfall. We were jubilant and immediately started furnishing and decorating.

As time went by, we increased our land with a third, fourth and fifth parcel until we rented more than half the sim. At that point Spyder and Jazzine encountered financial difficulties (or perhaps just decided to move on from SecondLife) and offered us to take over the full sim so we would rent it directly from Linden Lab. (That´s called landowning in SecondLife.) Because I am a citizen of the European Union we decided to name Ars as the sim-owner so we wouldn't have to pay the additional VAT-tax on landowning fees that the EU forced on the Lab.

After Ars passed away in February 2010 there was some paperwork needed to transfer the sim from his estate to me. Luckily, I had the full cooperation and understanding of his father and family in doing so, everyone is not so fortunate.

In hindsight it is my firm recommendation to anyone who co-owns anything whatsoever in SecondLife, to see to it that you make a will bequeathing any joint - or for that matter personal - property to the survivor. It is actually also in accordance with Linden Labs rules to bequeath the avatar itself and all of it´s possessions to the surviving partner.

Ars and I were too happy together and probably thought nothing bad could happen to change it to do any of those things, it almost cost me the dearest memories I had of him and our time together. Do not make the same mistake!