Illinois Passes New Tax on Sports Betting

Gov. JB Pritzker must be happy as he has long been pushing for a tougher stance on gambling in Illinois, with the latest budget pass that has passed through the state legislature achieving just that.

New Sports Betting Tax to Make It Harder for Legal Market

Looking to plug the public spending deficit, lawmakers have passed a new law that will significantly increase the tax contributions payable by sportsbooks if certain conditions have been met.

Moving forward, the first 20,000 wagers placed at a sportsbook will be taxed at a rate of 25 cents per wager, but anything after that will be levied with a 50-cent per wager tax instead. This puts Illinois broadly with the taxation used by New York, and it is one of the highest in the country.

Illinois is hoping to raise $36 million annually to the state’s coffers this way, with the Senate and House backing the measure almost unanimously.

The industry has been up in arms just as well, but more as an afterthought at this point, as legislators have not heeded cautious tales from industry-types about the “destruction” of gambling in the Prairie State.

Sportsbooks have called the measure high-handed and at odds with anything meaningful that is tried to achieve by regulating sports betting locally.

Rather than making the local market more competitive, the new tax will further entrench persistent problems, such as offshore gambling operators that target players with better bonuses but fail to offer any meaningful consumer-protection measures.

Illinois Not Dilly-Dallying, Regulating Other Aspects of Gambling

Other than tax sportsbooks, Illinois has been similarly observant of consumer protection in the state. The state introduced a ban on credit cards for gambling use, including sports betting, at the end of April.

Similarly, Illinois joined the choir of states in the country to target sweepstakes casino operators recently. Recently, Illinois brought a lawsuit against Stake.us over the latter’s social casino operations locally, which operated based on well-established sweepstakes rules.

Regardless, Illinois has taken issue with the company and has asked it to leave.