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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Death By a Thousand Cuts

Horseplaying is becoming a lost art. Each day something new happens which helps bleed horseplayers to death. In the latest salvo, the government of New Hampshire instituted a 10% tax on gambling winnings.

As one poster on Paceadvantage put it:

Imagine betting $100,000 a year on racing.....getting back $90,000....after losing $10,000, you then owe the state of NH $9,000 in taxes for gambling winnings.

Obviously this takes every horseplayer right out of the game.


He is correct. You can now lose money playing horses (like most do) and still OWE a tax. Break that down for a moment. This says this to a potential or current customer: "Please come play racing. You will be up against the highest takeouts of any skill game in world gambling history, and if you do lose as expected, you will lose again when tax time comes around."

Could you imagine if they did this with stock trading losses? If you lost $40k in stock trades, or investing in 2009, you do NOT owe money at the end of the year. In fact, losses can be carried forward in many instances. If they asked for a 10% tax like they are asking horseplayers for, the whole country's investing system would go on tilt.

This is bad news for racing, and bad news for the horseplayer. We are so busy lobbying the government for slots that these things seem to slip through the cracks, with no one there to say "no mas". Drip by drip, the game of handicapping is slowly being destroyed.

This is not yet law, but soon should be. Racing in NH has one more chance to save horseplaying in their state. You are not getting slots folks, so please try to save what you do have: horseplayers.

1 comment:

G. C. said...

Live free or die must be dead. Sounds like NH is learning from their corrupt tax master neighbors NY and Mass.