Card Player – The New Jersey online gaming industry has been steadily growing since its inception in late November of last year.
Despite this, the state is revising some of its projections on tax revenue from the new games. To put it simply, some predicted that the games would be more lucrative right off the bat than they have proven to be.
Early predictions were that more than $1 billion would be reaped by the casinos from online gambling during fiscal year one. That would have netted the state around $180 million in extra tax revenue.
According to the most recent reporting from The Star-Ledger, the state now estimates that an extra $34 million in tax revenue will be collected from the casino industry and put into state coffers, thanks to the online games and whatever positive effects they have on brick-and-mortar action, in the fiscal year ending in June.
Just last week, the state said that casinos incurred $15.9 million in gaming taxes for February, reflecting eight percent of taxable casino gross revenue and 15 percent of Internet gaming gross revenue. Online gaming revenue for the month crossed the $10-million mark.
“We were told by industry at the time that the introduction of online gaming would help energize Atlantic City’s ongoing recovery,” state Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff said last month, reported the Star-Ledger. “We’re pretty bullish on this in the medium-to-long term. But clearly, this hasn’t met our expectations for the first fiscal year.”
