Yeah seems like the writer of the PC Gamer article doesn’t understand what VAT is.

To laymen like you and I, this situation probably seems pretty open and shut. If you make money on something, you pay taxes on it.

Yeah VAT is not a tax on money made. VAT is a tax that is applied to a transaction for goods and service between a business and a consumer. VAT is a tax that the consumer pays. The business only collects it and has the obligation to pay it to the tax services. So even if a business makes zero profit they still need to pay the VAT they collected.

The question here was if RuneScape gold is a product or if it is legal tender. If it was legal tender then you don’t pay VAT on it, similar to when if you trade one currency to another VAT is not applied.