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House Proposes Legalizing, Taxing Online Gambling
eldavojohn writes "Passed in 2006, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act is set to go into effect June 1. New efforts by Democrats in the House of Representatives aim not only to stop that but to legalize and tax Internet gambling. Jim McDermott (D-WA), said, 'This is a huge boon to the state governments. If you look across the country you're seeing programs cut. In Arizona, they just cut out a program for children's health for 40,000 kids. Here's a source of money.' Basically, the bill proposes that for each state, a 6% cut would be taken from all wagers and go to the state in which the bet was made online, while federal would get 2%. They estimate in the next decade this would amount to $30 billion for state and tribal governments and $42 billion for the federal government in new taxes. Banks and casinos appear to be very much on board, while the usual crowd (Republicans, Focus on the Family, Think of the Children) gathered in opposition to the move."
I have a tendency to agree. Despite the social problems gambling brings. Just like alcohol, it seems better to tax it instead of watching the profits go somewhere else.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
what better way to fund state governments than predating upon the weaknesses of your citizens.
Ten bucks says you're wrong, sucka!
why "Republicans" are against this?? Aren't they supposed to be in favor of small goverment and fewer regulations? This is exactly why the tea parties are becoming so big, we should be able to do what we want with our own money in a free society, as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson Who cares? "It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
Given that many of the current online gambling sites are run anonymously by organized criminal networks outside the US, how would collection or enforcement work? Would gamblers be obliged to write how much they won on their annual tax returns, like we're supposed to note purchases made online?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
a) Instead of showing ANY fiscal restraint, the governments kept expanding to take advantage of the property tax bubble.
b) low interest rates pushed forward a lot of activity in the home building market, creating a lot of jobs which will not be replaced.
c) the executive class, whose pay has increased from 50x average to 450x average is actively shipping jobs overseas (to the tune of thousands).
d) the long term trend is wages will stagnate or drop towards those in BRIC. (brazil, russia, india, china). This means the value of houses, etc. will drop because people will have a smaller amount of money for paying for property. Smaller incomes also mean smaller taxes for the governments.
So the long term trend is lower property taxes, lower property values, fewer jobs, lower paying jobs.
The governments are going to absolutely hate it, but they are going to have to cut a lot of programs outside of welfare/unemployment benefit programs to prevent social unrest.
People's expectations of living in a 3,000 square foot house are going to have to reset back to 1600 square foot houses (or even the 1100 square foot houses prevalent in the 1950's.
And that's ignoring the scarily fast advances in robotics lately. An entire swath of basic manual jobs are on the verge of going away in a few years.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That sounds pretty extortionate. Consider that many games have a return rate in the high 90%s.
Previously a hundred dollars could go through dozens of wagers before being reduced by half on average. Now, that same hundred will provide much fewer wagers for the the same game.
I am actually more of a social conservative than most of these groups, and I fully support legalizing and taxing this. If you want people to be responsible, they have to have freedom. It's just that simple. A society where people don't engage in victimless crimes because the state is putting a gun to their head isn't a more moral society, it's just one where we pretend that everything is hunky dory.
For example, "the lottery" has regularly been shown to basically be a "poor tax." Isn't there a "usual crowd" who speaks out against regressive taxation? Aren't they leftists?
I would actually argue it is more of a "stupid tax" but I also feel that way about most forms of gambling.
The summary stated that they would take 6% for state and 2% for Fed on each WAGER... That is incorrect... they are taking 6%/2% of your DEPOSIT in the online gaming account. If they took 6%/2% of your WAGERS, you'd be broke in no time!
Given this level of taxation, I'd be in favor, just for the legalization aspect alone... I'm generally not in favor of "feeding the beast" with more tax revenues, but if it gets me legal online gaming, then I'm okay with it.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Basically, the bill proposes that for each state, a 6% cut would be taken from all wagers
First, what? Of all wagers, win or lose? Right now, you can hypothetically wager for an indefinite amount of time if the odds of winning are 50/50 (which they aren't but play along) and you never fall to zero. If each transaction is taxed, then you lose 6% on each hand, automatically, no matter what? I hope that's just poorly written.
Second, I'm against expanding gambling. Proponents point to Las Vegas and think that Spitsville, Arkansas will be just like that if only they legalize Keno. Well, no. What always happens is that the people who can least afford new, expensive habits end up losing everything. Crime goes up. Social service costs go up. Law enforcement costs go up. And the expenses are never covered by the trickle of tax revenue. Seriously, if you're against regressive taxes, then you kind of have to be against the realities of gambling. Warren Buffett isn't going to go broke on the craps tables, but Joe Sixpack very well might.
But more than that, I hate the outright lies told by the gambling lobbyists when they're trying to get it legalized. I lived in Missouri when they were voting on whether to add riverboat gambling. The idea is that all the taxes from it would go to education. How can you vote against that and take money away from the kids? Well, they were kind of telling the truth. What really happened was that if the education budget was $X (I forget the actual numbers involved), and the tax revenue from gambling was $Y, then the new education budget was still exactly $X. The difference was that $Y of it came from gambling, and the rest came from the general fund as usual. Furthermore, the total amount of taxes collected did not go up, as a lot of the hypothetical extra revenue was lost to decreased sales taxes, lowered property values, etc., while service expenditures went up quite a bit. A couple of years into the grand experiment, it looked like Missouri was losing about 3*$Y from their bottom line. The casino's owners, on the other hand, were quite happy to export the revenues to their own state and let someone else clean up the mess.
I'm pretty libertarian in my views. If you want to do something and it doesn't harm anyone but yourself, then have at. Contrary to the tone of the summary, I have no moral objections to gambling whatsoever. In practice, though, gambling seems to cause a lot of collateral damage around its participants. I guess I lump it in with smoking in restaurants; although I understand the arguments for allowing it, I have to admit that I've enjoyed not having it around anymore.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?