Just about every week or so lately, we can read in the news about countries that have changed their minds about online gambling and decided to regulate, instead of banning internet gambling. While there have always been a very vocal number of gambling opponents, most people have wanted to have legal online gambling all along but the squeaky wheel gets the grease, as the saying goes. Now governments are realizing that if they regulate, rather than ban, certain activities then they could collect tax revenue on those activities.

In the US, it has always been the law to claim any gambling winnings on your income tax, however in reality, most people do not claim internet winnings. Even though the US has taken a strong anti-internet gambling stance, American citizens have usually found a way to access sites licensed in other parts of the world to gamble anyhow. Since those sites obviously don’t have to report payouts to the government, the winners can easily get away without claiming their gambling income.

With regulation, not only would the government be able to find out about all such transactions in order to verify it on income taxes, they would also be able to monitor the online casinos that operate in their jurisdiction for compliance to all the regulations as well as levying a tax directly on the casino. With today’s economic outlook still pretty bleak, this is becoming a more attractive proposition to many US politicians and they are pushing for regulation of the industry.

It has been estimated that a legal internet gambling industry could bring in more than a billion dollars in new revenues for the American governmental coffers annually. That would certainly go a long way towards easing the country out of its current budget crunch and perhaps start paying off the gigantic deficit!

There are at least two bills making their way through Congress right now. One proposes to at least allow internet poker as a skill based game while the other wishes to completely nullify the UIGEA of 2006 which put an end to legal online gambling in the US. The second bill has over 50 supporters now so industry insiders are getting their hopes up and their businesses ready to pounce on the market when it opens.