Wagering excise taxes

Last updated

The United States levies excise taxes on both legal and illegal gambling transactions.

United States Federal republic in North America

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

IRS Form 730, Tax on Wagering, is used to compute excise taxes for both legal and illegal wagers of certain types. For state authorized wagers placed with bookmakers and lottery operators there is a tax of 0.25% of the wager, if it is legal. If the wager is not legal, the tax is 2% of the wager.

Related Research Articles

Smuggling illegal movement of goods or people

Smuggling is the illegal transportation of objects, substances, information or people, such as out of a house or buildings, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.

Whiskey Rebellion tax protest in the United States from 1791 to 1794

The Whiskey Rebellion was a tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 and ending in 1794 during the presidency of George Washington, ultimately under the command of American Revolutionary war veteran Major James McFarlane. The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government. It became law in 1791, and was intended to generate revenue for the war debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. The tax applied to all distilled spirits, but American whiskey was by far the country's most popular distilled beverage in the 18th century, so the excise became widely known as a "whiskey tax". Farmers of the western frontier were accustomed to distilling their surplus rye, barley, wheat, corn, or fermented grain mixtures into whiskey. These farmers resisted the tax. In these regions, whiskey often served as a medium of exchange. Many of the resisters were war veterans who believed that they were fighting for the principles of the American Revolution, in particular against taxation without local representation, while the federal government maintained that the taxes were the legal expression of Congressional taxation powers.

A fuel tax is an excise tax imposed on the sale of fuel. In most countries the fuel tax is imposed on fuels which are intended for transportation. Fuels used to power agricultural vehicles, and/or home heating oil which is similar to diesel are taxed at a different, usually lower rate. The fuel tax receipts are often dedicated or hypothecated to transportation projects so that the fuel tax is considered by many a user fee. In other countries, the fuel tax is a source of general revenue. Sometimes, the fuel tax is used as an ecotax, to promote ecological sustainability. Fuel taxes are often considered regressive taxes.

Excise tax in the United States is an indirect tax on listed items. Excise taxes can be and are made by federal, state and local governments and are not uniform throughout the United States. Some excise taxes are collected from the producer or retailer and not paid directly by the consumer, and as such often remain "hidden" in the price of a product or service, rather than being listed separately.

Online casinos, also known as virtual casinos or Internet casinos, are online versions of traditional casinos. Online casinos enable gamblers to play and wager on casino games through the Internet. It is a prolific form of online gambling.

Sports betting gambling

Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome. The frequency of sports bet upon varies by culture, with the vast majority of bets being placed on association football, American football, basketball, baseball, hockey, track cycling, auto racing, mixed martial arts, and boxing at both the amateur and professional levels. Sports betting can also extend to non-athletic events, such as reality show contests and political elections, and non-human contests such as horse racing, greyhound racing, and illegal, underground dog fighting. It is not uncommon for sports betting websites to offer wagers for entertainment events such as the Grammys, the Oscars, and the Emmy Awards.

Indirect tax tax collected by an intermediary

An indirect tax is a tax collected by an intermediary from the person who bears the ultimate economic burden of the tax. The intermediary later files a tax return and forwards the tax proceeds to government with the return. In this sense, the term indirect tax is contrasted with a direct tax, which is collected directly by government from the persons on whom it is imposed. Some commentators have argued that "a direct tax is one that cannot be charged by the taxpayer to someone else, whereas an indirect tax can be."

Tax resistance refusal to pay tax due to opposition

Tax resistance is the refusal to pay tax because of opposition to the government that is imposing the tax, or to government policy, or as opposition to taxation in itself. Tax resistance is a form of direct action and, if in violation of the tax regulations, also a form of civil disobedience.

Online gambling includes poker, casinos and sports betting. The first online casino was in 1994. Many countries restrict or ban online gambling, but it is legal in some provinces in Canada, most countries of the European Union and several nations in the Caribbean.

Gambling in the United States

Gambling in the United States is legally restricted. In 2008, gambling activities generated gross revenues of $92.27 billion in the United States.

Excise tax that taxes the consumption of certain goods

An excise or excise tax is any duty on manufactured goods which is levied at the moment of manufacture, rather than at sale. Excises are often associated with customs duties ; customs are levied on goods which come into existence – as taxable items – at the border, while excise is levied on goods which came into existence inland.

Treasury Regulations are the tax regulations issued by the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a bureau of the United States Department of the Treasury. These regulations are the Treasury Department's official interpretations of the Internal Revenue Code and are one source of U.S. federal income tax law.

Black market market in which goods or services are traded illegally

A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by some form of noncompliant behavior with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services whose production and distribution is prohibited by law, non-compliance with the rule constitutes a black market trade since the transaction itself is illegal. Parties engaging in the production or distribution of prohibited goods and services are members of the illegal economy. Examples include the drug trade, prostitution, illegal currency transactions and human trafficking. Violations of the tax code involving income tax evasion constitute membership in the unreported economy.

Tax protesters in the United States advance a number of constitutional arguments asserting that the imposition, assessment and collection of the federal income tax violates the United States Constitution. These kinds of arguments, though related to, are distinguished from statutory and administrative arguments, which presuppose the constitutionality of the income tax, as well as from general conspiracy arguments, which are based upon the proposition that the three branches of the federal government are involved together in a deliberate, on-going campaign of deception for the purpose of defrauding individuals or entities of their wealth or profits. Although constitutional challenges to U.S. tax laws are frequently directed towards the validity and effect of the Sixteenth Amendment, assertions that the income tax violates various other provisions of the Constitution have been made as well.

Alcohol law Wikimedia disambiguation page

Alcohol laws are laws in relation to the manufacture, use, being under the influence of and sale of alcohol or alcoholic beverages that contains ethanol. Common alcoholic beverages include beer, wine, and distilled spirits. The United States defines an alcoholic beverage as, "any beverage in liquid form which contains not less than one-half of one percent of alcohol by volume", but this definition varies internationally. These laws can restrict those who can produce alcohol, those who can buy it, when one can buy it, labelling and advertising, the types of alcoholic beverage that can be sold, where one can consume it, what activities are prohibited while intoxicated, and where one can buy it. In some cases, laws have even prohibited the use and sale of alcohol entirely, as with Prohibition in the United States from 1920 to 1933.

Chickasaw Nation v. United States, 534 U.S. 84 (2001), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that Indian tribes were liable for taxes on gambling operations under 25 U.S.C. §§ 2701–2721.

American Jobs Creation Act of 2004

The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 was a federal tax act that repealed the export tax incentive (ETI), which had been declared illegal by the World Trade Organization several times and sparked retaliatory tariffs by the European Union. It also contained numerous tax credits for agricultural and business institutions as well as the repeal of excise taxes on both fuel and alcohol and the creation of tax credits for biofuels.

United States v. Janis, 428 U.S. 433 (1976), was a Supreme Court Case that found Max Janis and Morris Levine guilty of illegal bookmaking activities in Los Angeles in a 5-3 ruling. The two were arrested for the crime in November 1968. Appealing on the grounds of unconstitutionally seized evidence, Janis and Levine were heard by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 1973. The case was ultimately heard by the Supreme Court in 1975, and the two were found guilty in 1976. More importantly, the case established that the exclusionary rule does not apply to civil cases where evidence is unconstitutionally seized by a state officer but used by a federal institution.

Central Bureau of Narcotics

Central Bureau of Narcotics is affiliated with India's Department of Revenue (IRS) and regulated by the country's Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs. The main function of CBN is to stop opium production and trade, and to issue licenses for production of legal synthetic drugs. The Central Bureau of Narcotics headquarters is located at Gwalior.