A recent report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers has found that the US is missing out on billions of dollars of potential revenue for introducing the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which effectively bans online gambling in the USA.
US house representative Jum McDermott presented the report, which estimates that the US could generate between $8.7 and $42.8 billion over a period of 10 years if they regulated online gambling.
"This is simply a framework to collect taxes on existing activity that is currently unregulated, unsupervised, and underground," he said, before going on to say he was bringing to the attention of the US congress the "[...]opportunity to protect customers and recoup billions of dollars that should be collected by the Internal Revenue Service."
McDermott is proposing a bill in addition to the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act which was introduced by Representative Barney Frank. McDermott's proposal is to set up licensing and regulations for internet gambling in the US, giving individual states control over gambling within their borders, and allowing them to tax or restrict trading on their own terms.
"Instead of this ineffective attempt to prevent adults from gambling over the internet, we need a more sensible approach to protect consumers and ensure that revenues that now flow offshore stay here in the US and are therefore subject to taxation," said McDermott.
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