Contemporary Issues in Accounting 2013 Assignment 2 – major report Weighting: 25 % Length: approximately 2,500 words (max 2,750) Topic: Definition, recognition and measurement of Virtual assets This assignment may be completed in groups of up to 3 students. Groups are not compulsory and students are welcome to make individual submissions. Group assignments can be very effective and often achieve a higher mark than individual submissions – but equally, there are often problems within groups. Please consider carefully your responsibilities if you choose to work with other students in a group – all members are ultimately responsible for the final assignment and will receive the same mark. Topic: While the accounting profession and regulators still struggle with determining a single measurement regime are whole new class of assets has developed-particularly since around the beginning of this century. We are all familiar with physical assets and with most types of intangible assets but virtual assets are the latest items with which the profession needs to contend. Virtual assets arise most commonly from the virtual economy which exists in a virtual world online. Participants in the game Second Life for instance are required to purchase Linden dollars in order to undertake transactions within that world. So real money is being used to purchase virtual goods in these worlds but these goods do not cease to exist when the player ceases playing the game and Linden dollars can be exchanged for real money by selling them to another player. Virtual assets do not consist only of those we find with in online games however. Virtual assets also include electronic data stored on a computer or the Internet, such as digital photos, domain names and Internet bank accounts. There are increasing concerns about how people deal with such assets in terms of their estate planning (in other words, what happens to these items when we die?) and taxation authorities are becoming increasingly…