In a stunning move of arrogance, a New York State Assemblyman is pushing a new bill to lock-in the 51% gambling tax rate. The bill would prohibit any licensees from ever requesting a change that tax, which is tied for the highest in the nation.
It’s worth noting that while this bill would hamstring any operator from ever requesting a lower tax rate, it contains no language whatsoever to prevent the state from raising that tax rate. The specific wording of the bill states that “once such contracts have been awarded and a tax rate has been established, no modification to such tax rate may be requested by a licensee.”
This seems pretty underhanded, but what else would you expect from New York politics? And it’s worth noting that they waited for the operators to pay for their licenses and, in some cases, begin taking sports bets, before rolling out yet another sucker punch.
While speaking to Business Insider the CEO of Spring Owl Asset Management, Jason Ader, stated “Everybody wants to be in New York because it’s a trophy market… but the tax rate is really prohibitive”. And now, some politicians want to guarantee that prohibitive gambling tax rate can only go up over time.