Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs committee approves bill to give gaming industry $83 million tax break

By Kathleen Peppo
LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE--The Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs committee approved a bill to give the gaming industry an $83 million tax break over five years after the major hit it took from the COVID-19 shutdown.

The bill would allow each casino to give customers $5 million in free promotional play wagers without having to pay state taxes on those amounts. Anything above $5 million would be taxed at the normal rate, 21.5 percent.

The tax break would cost the state $11.2 million in revenues in the next fiscal year, starting July 1.

The Legislature is planning to cut spending on higher education by $21 million as it struggles to balance next year’s budget, and the added revenue losses from this bill and others aimed at helping businesses recover from the virus shutdown could force more budget cuts.

In May, the Senate committee rejected a more costly resolution to suspend taxes on all promotional play wagers in the gaming industry. That would have cost the state $29 million in tax revenues next year and $217.9 million over five years.

A promotional play wager is a marketing tactic used by casinos and race tracks nationwide by which the casino sends a potential customer a voucher for a set amount of money to encourage that potential customer to come to the casino.

said he brought the latest bill because of the large impact that the gaming industry has on Louisiana’s economy and workforce.

Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, opened up about the huge impact the gaming industry has had on her own life, speaking up about her recovery from a gambling addiction and the silent costs of expanding the industry.