Pennsylvania gambling bill puts the gross in gross revenue tax

If it’s Tuesday, it must mean Pennsylvania has yet another sweeping gambling expansion bill to consider.

Monday saw the release of state Sen. Jay Costa’s 207-page SB 524, which the senator previewed in January. The bill follows the HB 392 bill introduced in the state House of Representatives last month (and its identikit Senate version SB 477).

Costa’s bill adopts many of the same positions staked out by HB 392, including allowing for online gambling, daily fantasy sports (DFS), mobile tablet gaming at select airports, fixing the unconstitutional slots tax for casino host communities, allowing skill-based gaming machines in casinos and allowing Category 3 casinos to ditch their loathed non-gaming amenity requirements in return for annual payments of $1m for five years.

However, as previously advertised, Costa’s SB 524 would impose a 25% tax on online gambling and DFS revenue versus HB 392’s far more palatable 14% (although still preferable to earlier Senate bills that imagined a 54% rate). Costa also wants online licensees to pay upfront fees of $10m rather than $8m, while online technology partners would pay $5m fees versus $2m in HB 392. (Oh, and if you have any first-born children, kindly drop them off at the statehouse soylent green processing center.)