The momentum for intrastate online poker legalisation in the state of New York picked up this week when Rep. Gary Pretlow introduced a companion bill to SB 6913 introduced to the Senate earlier this year (see previous report).
The Assembly bill closely follows the thrust of its Senate counterpart that poker is primarily a game of skill, and the new bill has been referred to the Assembly Committee on Wagering and Racing.
Despite the failure of attempts to classify online poker as a game of skill in the Di Cristina case, which failed on appeal, the new bill notes that the judiciary has not limited the authority of the state legislature to decide that some forms of poker are predominantly games of skill and should fall outside the category of gambling.
The Pretlow bill includes “bad actor” language with a cut-off date of end December 2006, the year in which the UIGEA was implemented, and proposes a tax rate of 15 percent and a licensing fee of $10 million. It also criminalises online poker operators who enter the market unlicensed, and renders them liable to tax on any illegal income derived from New York players.
Read the bill here: