Casino Tax Revenue Truths
Many of you have questioned Gov. Beshear's claim that Kentucky's treasury could rake in $500 million a year in revenue from legalized casinos. That's a fair question.
But first we need to know what the real gaming tax revenues are from other states, not the 2004 numbers that many of you are quoting from one Kentucky blog site. So here they are, courtesy of the Indiana Gaming Commission's 2007 annual report. These are figures for FY '07:
Indiana $851 million
Illinois $830 million
N.J. $444 million
Mo. $387 million
La. $383 million
Miss. $332 million
Iowa $175 million
The chart you'll see on the Indiana Gaming Commission web page also shows the effective tax rate for casinos in each one of those states. If Kentucky taxes at 35%, which was the figure included in the 2007 casino bill, it would have the second highest tax rate, behind only Illinois.
Comments
Good Job Monsieur Hebert!
Now can you get a price on the social costs of Gambling?
Keep in mind, we are one third the size of Illinois and two thirds the size of Indiana. We are about the same size as Louisiana.
Posted by: RR | January 27, 2008 8:41 PM
How much they get isn't quite as important as how much winds up being spent unproductively. Until that side of the equation can be resolved, we aren't really having a meaningful public policy discussion about this.
Posted by: David Adams | January 27, 2008 9:51 PM
Well no sh......, The Rural Democrat has been screeming this for 2 weeks. I guess Shack needs to advertise.
Posted by: Hillbilly | January 28, 2008 9:34 AM