The IRS has well established policies regarding barters, and businesses that engage in barter transactions are expected to declare the fair market value of traded items as taxable income. When players trade items within a game, the transaction is theoretically subject to barter tax policy regardless of whether or not real world currency is involved. Does that mean that Blizzard should be submitting a Form 1099-B, "Proceeds from Broker and Barter Exchange Transactions," for every World of Warcraft player?

Trading WoW items or characters is a violation of the terms of use of WoW. In fact, any item and any character stays at any time the property of Blizzard Inc. Consequently, in-game trade is no real trade because no values are exchanged.