With health-care over and done with perhaps Congress is beginning to take the necessary steps to legalize and regulate online poker. Since last year Barney Frank’s bill that would legalize and regulate the industry has sat in a legislative limbo –with only one committee hearing on the topic—while state after state is taking up the cause for themselves.

Today saw an important second step in getting the ball rolling as Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) introduced a companion bill that would aid individual states and tribal governments. The bill would give the states –in addition to the federal government—a piece of the online poker pie; generating huge revenue for cash-strapped states.

McDermott’s proposal calls for a 6% state tax on all deposits, in addition to a 2% federal tax. According to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, online poker legislation would raise $42 billion over 10 years for the federal government, and McDermott’s new bill would raise $30 billion for the states over the same time period.

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Tags: Barney Frank’s bill, companion bill, legalize and regulate online poker

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Legal Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.