Poker Traffic

"Poker, an untapped source of money taxpayers"

Currently in the U.S., Internet gaming is operated outside of our economic system and revenue. Despite this fact, it enjoys great popularity in the United States and grew up in a major industry. In this industry, online poker has become the decisive factor for the significant growth of Internet gaming. It would seem that this growth will continue to dominate, but in 2006 the U.S. government adopted the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in response to the boom of online poker. In short, the law prohibits American poker players to fund an account online poker site together with a financial institution. The reasoning behind the UIGEA legislation is that companies that run offshore gambling sites, with many U.S. clients may be involved in other criminal activities. Moreover, contrary to the legal gambling in the United States, the government receives no tax revenue from offshore operations.

The act has caused panic and frustration among many players and has caused many companies to leave internet poker in the U.S. market (and especially "Party Poker"). However, despite the legislation of some sites have seen this as a business opportunity to absorb the displaced players, and these companies continue to thrive today. For example, according pokerscout.com Poker Stars in 2007 (one of the sites that remained on the U.S. market) hit a record poker online traffic that was previously held by Party Poker.

So now you may ask: How do these online poker sites continue to be profitable in the United States with the enactment of UIGEA? Well firstly the UIGEA does not prohibit a person to play poker online, it prohibits the transfer of funds from a U.S. financial institution in an account of online poker. The simple answer is people and poker sites have found other ways to transfer funds. For services such as ewallet; ewallet works like PayPal does for eBay. In addition, some sites accept phone cards online that you can buy with your Visa card, then you use the phone card online to finance the poker account. Basically these alternative ways to disguise the direct transfer of a financial institution and have been very effective.

Rather than trying to prevent Americans from playing poker online, the federal government should adopt. Taking an opposite position on Internet gaming, including internet poker, the government denied itself a major source of income and the potential associated with the ability to regulate this industry. Before the enactment of the UIGEA, there was no applicable federal laws regulating online poker. Instead of the prohibition, the United States should enact legislation to establish poker as an activity of U.S. business viable and collect tax revenues in this activity. Considering the magnitude of the poker industry on the Internet, the federal government could collect a significant source of revenue after the integration of this industry in our economy. The estimates of federal revenue-based market existing Internet poker, if regulated and taxed, potentially generate more than 3.3 billion dollars annually in new taxes.

If appropriate legislative measures have been taken, the potential sources of revenue would come from tax revenues from individual income taxes, user fees, taxes and corporate income. Revenue associated with individuals is simply the income tax paid on their earnings. According to conservative estimates show that taxes on individuals alone increase federal revenues by about $ 2.5 billion annually. Revenue associated with the companies that emerge from these Internet gaming companies that locate in the United States and other American companies do they pay taxes on net income associated with their activity. Add.