Online gambling is available throughout the world. From the United Kingdom to Australia, Canada to China and really everywhere in between. Everywhere, however, except the United States. While there are a few options available, most are regulated to a few card games. Online gambling has started to pop up in a few states that has made it legal, such as New Jersey, but for the most part, gamers in the United States are simply not able to log on and play online casino games legally in the United States? Why is that? Well, there are a few different rules and reasons as to why that is. It simply comes down to understand why it is not allowed and what is going on to change it. There is no one reason, but there are a couple. Thankfully though, for those individuals outside of the United States or residents of the U.S. traveling abroad, it is still possible to gamble online.
Original Online Gambling
Originally, online gambling was perfectly legal in the United States. Gamers could be anywhere in the country and play anything from poker to slots, blackjack to slots and just about any other popular online casino game in between. Then, however, problems started to arise. Many of these companies started to just disappear out of nowhere. The companies were not located in the United States, so the U.S. government couldn’t track them down (or at least it proved extremely difficult), and players with money in these services lost out. There were some players who lost millions of dollars. In order to prevent this from happening, the United States effectively banned most gambling websites, making it rather difficult for anyone to play. Now, after the ban there were still a handful of options, all of which were based in the United States, but nothing like what it had been. Essentially though, this helped weed out many of the problem gambling websites for the rest of the world. After these early incidents in the opening stages of the Internet and online gambling, other countries started to invoke harsher requirements for companies looking to offer gambling opportunities. This, however, did not turn the United States back on to allowing online gambling.
Why No Online Gambling Still and What is the US Looking For?
When it comes down to what the United States is looking for in order to bring online gambling back, there basically are two different answers. Answer A, is money. Also known as tax dollars. The gambling industry brings in hundreds of billions of dollars every single year in the form of taxes, which especially helps the government. If online gambling websites returned to the United States based out of other locations, it becomes difficult to tax these international entities, especially when all of the business is done online. The U.S. does not want to miss out on all of this money, so it would much rather just have individuals go to casinos. Now, while it is true Indian casinos do not pay taxes like a standard casino, the United States is alright with this current transaction method. So, before the United States allows individuals in the country to start gambling online again, it is going to want a piece of the pie.
The second reason online gambling has not returned to the U.S. is because the government still wants to protect its citizens from scams and other potential financial issues of companies taking money and disappearing internationally, leaving more customers missing out on large chunks of money. In order to do this, the country is most likely not going to allow any international online gambling institutions to open up in the country any time soon, if ever. In order for the United States to move closer towards lifting the ban on online gambling, it is going to first allow the online casinos to only exist on American social and then, by doing this, the country is able to receive the tax incentives provided by having these online casinos based in the U.S.
Starting to Move
It is true the United States is starting to move towards lifting the ban. This is moving at a state by state decision. Each state has its own set of laws and regulations regarding gambling. Some states allow casinos to be present anywhere in the state while others only allow casinos to exist on Indian reserves. Other states have the lottery, gambling options inside of bars and other options. Some of these states have started to experiment with allowing online poker playing websites. Although not as extensive as what the other countries are allowing, it is a start. Some of the other states in the US are monitoring how it works and how much money the states are able to raise from the online casinos.
So, in order for online casinos to start to spread throughout the United States, it is necessary for the states allowing online gambling to do well in this spectrum. First, the online gambling needs to bring in a good amount of tax money, and it needs to mean this tax money is not coming at the expense of traditional casinos. If it is just moving from one location to the next it really is not going to help out anything, which means other states are going to be less likely to open up online casinos and gambling.
All of this is very important to keep in mind when it comes to the ban on gambling in the United States. The U.S. essentially started the world of online gambling, but after a few major issues, the country effectively outlawed it form taking place in the country, with a few exceptions. Since then, there has been very little in the way of online casinos and gambling. There have been some improvements and some strides in allowing individuals to partake in online gambling, but for the most part, this is not something that has truly taken off or has become widespread in the United States. Due to the burn of these former companies that split the U.S. and effectively disappeared, it is important to just wait and watch. Online gambling is likely going to return to the entire country in some shape or form, although it is going to take some time. The better the tax revenues are for online casinos in the legalized states, the faster it is going to spread, so for those who have been waiting to partake in online gambling in the U.S., the best thing they can do is visit these state run websites and help with the tax revenue.
