How is the various countries in EU finding out that you are playing this game in the first place? Or that you are going to any site on the web be it an EU, US or South Africa? Is there a SOE(EU) and that company is giving your names to your respective governments? If SOE(US) is adding this tax based soley on billing address or IP address then SOE(US) is giving your information to people that they should not be talking to. (my opionion)

Going to everquest.station.sony.com/about.jsp by looking at the bottom of the web page it states Sony computer entertainment america. and 1999-2003 sony computer entertainment america. all rights reserved. It does not look like there is a SOE(EU). A company outside the EU community is providing information about your doings to your respective governments.

I clicked the VeriSign Secrue button on the sony pages (the ones with billing information) and it states that sony is a US based company out of California. it further states that "all information sent to this site, if in an SSL session, in encrypted, protecting against disclosure to third parties." So why is Sony providing any information to any EU country unless there is money involved? (Yes I know this disclaimer is stating that the pipeline from my computer to there server/data base is secure and the information passed across would be extremely difficult if not impossible to capture and decipher based on industry standards of encryption and the risk blah, blah, blah.....) SOE and you are the only ones who know ur playing this game.

I wonder how much of this VAT is being "kicked" back to SOE(US) for this name dropping service?

Is SOE providing any demographics to your governments (what city your playing from) so that improvements can be made toward the phone systems, etc along with the number of ppl playing?

If the VAT is variable, then SOE should be charging that rate based on what country your from. That is not proper that you should pay a VAT rate that is not established for your community. SOE if you wish to assist the EU gougers then get your wonderful programers to provide the proper rates based on what country they are from, not just some whimsical across the board rate.

I live in Virgina Beach, Va and my 6 month billing rate is $65.70. There is no tax information published so I cannot tell you if SOE is providing any tax returns to my state or city for the use of this subscription. Nor for that matter if Im even being billed for VA taxes. Maybe others in the states could post there values to see if there is a diffrence.

You know there's a reason Switzerland didn't join the EU and so far we've been served pretty well not belonging to them.

This tax is only about 2-3 dollars more a month and last time I checked that’s not much money at all. Then again you could say if its not much money why even bother taxing it. I don’t know, but its nothing to go nuts over. If the matter of $2 will throw you over into bankruptcy maybe you shouldn’t be playing EQ at all. Just a thought.

I sincerely hope this does not happen in the US. It's ridiculous that it is happening anywhere for that matter. I think that the goverments are doing just fine with the taxes they already have. Perhaps if you wanted to add more money to the goverment Surplus you could... oh i don' t know... Cut your own high end pay check that could feed you and 30 other people for a year. Taxing the internet is out of line, proof of political greed, and proof that anarchy may be the only option in keeping enough of our money. It's only a little more than a dollar a month extra for that tax on everquest but i could use that money for a drink at a convenience store :P

My only question is where is the value being added.
Any tax that is justified is reasonable. But just puting a title on the tax that makes it sound justified doesn't make it so.
You guys need to let your polititians know that the EU is just a way to give more power to more polititians. It serves no other perpose. At least no other perpose that it was intended to serve.

To my EU brothers and sisters in arms: My sympathies to you for this rediculous tax.

-Ellisarion
51 Paladin of Tunare

I think it is rediculous to charge you for playing a game online. In the states, the Federal Gov't and my State Gov't tax for usage of the internet connection already. They use the same tax that they do for the regular phone, just applied to internet. Which is small.

Lesson learned here is this, if you add another level of Gov't and subject yourself to it. They will need some form of revenue to run it's services. The less Gov't the better. Also, you Europeans have a more Socialist leaning Gov't in most of your countries compared to the U.S., your taxes will be higher because it "Evens" things out and pays for all the Social programs your countries provide.

Remember your all in Democracies. If you don't like what is going on then change it. Petition your Gov't to withdraw from the EU?!? If you think that your vote doesn't count, it does. Every vote does count. I was in the middle of it here in Florida during the last election.

This Tax like any other tax anywhere is BS but what can we do bisides blow up and or maim our country's leaders.

I honestly don blame anyone in EU for leaving he game .. I would.
Not just for he simple fact that is paying out more cash bu c'mon guys ive played alot of he new MMORPG's and i have to say that yes EQ has more territory to roam than most MMORPG's ive played recently but hats due to the fact there are so many damned expansions to buy.
Anyway back to my point...
Eq may have upped the graphics of its races and new zones but all the old got left looking like 8bit ****. No to mention the money your pumpin out o make your system 10 times what it needs to be to play any other mmorpg. example..i have 256 megs of ram but yet i have to turn off most off most of my character graphic upgrades if i intend to zone wihin 5 minutes on a dsl connection.
In Star Wars Galaxies Beta I ran just fine and there is almost no zoneing and the graphics are 10X EQ...same goes for Dark Age of Camelot.
Hell at his point im wondering why the hell i even pay to play this damn game.

Another EU scam for the fat cats.

Bah!

Not only do i live in an EU country i was also for my country to join EU.

Now some a-hole have come up with the idiot idea that we should pay VAT for service rendered over the internet.

Now one of the best things about the net was that it was borderless.

Now the idiot who came up wih the VAT on the net just build a wall around EU.

EU welcome back into the new IT Iron Curtain Wall.

Lets build more walls around EU countries and isolate us even more from other countries.
And when we are at it lets raise the VAT as well.

Its sad that they use VAT on the internet, building borders, thats something EU is real good at.

One of the finest things about EU that i saw, was it becoming a border less and united Europe.
But the further we evolve, the nastier and dis-united we seem to become.

Whats next, new tolls on surfing the web outside the EU ?

//Kneron

Edited, Wed Jul 2 06:30:53 2003

berk ...