Michigan next State to Approve Online Gambling for 2018

Online gambling is a controversial issue, but it is slowly and surely taking the world by storm and therefore, it followed in the footsteps of many other important affairs and made its way into government.

Recently, there was a 12-3 vote within the Michigan House of the Senate, which caused the new bill to be passed. The bill to allow for online gambling was introduced in September, following the previous attempt to legalize online gambling’s failure.

However, there were still hiccups to this bill being passed, many were concerned about the impact of legalization of online gambling would have on the effect of commercial and tribal gaming houses. Unfortunately, these aforementioned players also did not show any support for the new legislation either, and there was also a general worry over whether or not the implementation of this new piece of legislation could be seen as in line with the current constitutional values of the state of Michigan.

Therefore Senator Iden, who has been overseeing this bill, called a stakeholder meeting to gather all of the relevant parties and put as many issues to rest as humanly possible, according to online poker report. The interesting areas within this new bill were initially first leaked via Twitter, the first new piece to emerge from the act is that all online gambling servers must be held on the premises of a casino and secondly, that a new tax method relevant to the online gambling industry was unveiled within this legislation. Talk about mixing things up.

Many feel that the latest tax plan is a bid to garner the support of the many casinos within the area, and it worked, well to a certain degree. The tax distribution scheme made gambling providers pay a 15% tax on all revenue accumulated and this may have led to the change in attitude of the commercial casinos towards the new legislation. Yet, it must be noted that the tribal casinos within the area have not yet come around.

The law is so highly anticipated that the Vice President of the Poker Players Alliance Rich Muny published a blog post attempting to persuade the committee to form a New Year’s resolution to pass the online gambling bill as soon as possible in 2018, according to cards chat.com. There are many reasons to be excited for the new online gambling bill; some of the benefits touted of its arrival include creation of employment and the use of tax revenue to stimulate areas such as education.

The only question we want answered, is when will they pass it?