An Australian YouTuber who purchased a rare Team Fortress 2 weapon for creating YouTube content says he plans to claim it on tax next year.
This may come as a shock, but it might be the first time someone has tried to turn a digital asset into a tax write-off in Australia.
The story, first reported over at Crikey, and republished by Smart Company, concerns YouTuber elmaxo, a content creator with around 200,000 subscribers. Team Fortress 2 videos are the backbone of elmaxo’s channel, which he produces as a full-time job. Many of his videos are about meeting and beating sky-high personal challenges. His most recent video details his quest to rack up 10,000 kills in just seven days.
To do this, elmaxo investigated which of the game’s many class and weapon combos would be most efficient for raking in quick kills. As a Soldier main, elmaxo initially tried to find a reliable way to hit his target without changing off his favoured class. However, he eventually settled on the Pyro and the Phlogistinator.
There are TF2 veterans reading this piece and rolling their eyes because they now know exactly how this is going to go.
The Phlogistinator, or Phlog as it’s known in the community, is an unlockable flamethrower weapon for the Pyro that asks the player to make a simple exchange — utility for power. The Phlog doesn’t have the Pyro’s much-beloved airburst secondary fire. Airburst is typically used to deflect incoming projectiles and extinguish any teammates that may be on fire. It’s an extremely useful part of the Pyro’s overall kit, and sacrificing it is a brutal ask. However, the trade-off is that it allows the Pyro to harness the fires of Hell itself. The Phlog’s inherent mechanic is that it has an MMMPH bar that fills with every bit of damage you dish out. Once filled, MMMPH can be activated to provide the Pyro with a short stream of Critical Damage, similar to an Uber Charge. In these moments, the Phlog Pyro becomes a menace, tearing through clumped-up enemy teams in a flash.
Naturally, because of this, the Phlog Pyro is despised within the community. It’s seen as a braindead, W+M1 approach to playing the character.
But it is among the most efficient ways to harvest kills, and so it became elmaxo’s go-to weapon. But he didn’t need just any weapon — elmaxo needed a special version of the Phlog. Specifically, he needed a Collector’s tier Phlog. Collector’s tier items are extremely rare in TF2, and come from crafting Chemistry Set items from the November 2013 patch, which aren’t really available anymore. Though they aren’t functionally different to Strange or Unique items, their red-text names and the overall rarity of the Collector’s tier make unused items highly sought-after among TF2 traders. One of the features of Strange, Unique, and Collector’s tier items is that they can track the number of kills the weapon racks up.
A Phlogistinator of this particular rarity is, unsurprisingly, exceedingly rare. Item tracking website backpack.tf currently lists fewer than 200 Collector’s tier Phlogs available for sale in the world.
Elmaxo spent just under $500 to secure his Collector’s Phlogistinator and, because he has recently created an ABN to ensure his YouTube earnings are properly taxed, he considers the purchase a tax deduction. He’s so confident he’ll be able to claim this entirely digital asset that he originally named the gun “Taxation Administration Act 1953”, the piece of legislation that he believed would allow him to claim it (though Crikey reports he has since updated that to “Income Tax Assessment Act 1997” after an eagle-eyed viewer informed him it was the more relevant law).
We’ve spoken a bit about claiming gaming items on tax before. Business expenses can, of course, be claimed as a deduction provided you a) have a receipt and b) can prove the purchase was necessary or relevant to earning your income. As Crikey noted, the ATO has released lists of weird tax deduction claims in the past, noting where people have tried to claim everything from beers to LEGO kits.
We watch with interest to see how elmaxo gets on, and if the ATO will be willing to help him out with his very unusual business expense.
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