Our North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue, fighting a losing battle against video gambling operations, says “We need to tax the heck out of them and regulate them, regulate them hard.” Makes sense to me. The same idea makes sense for marijuana, too, instead of continuing the 40-year war on it. See “Laws To Tax Marijuana,” 59 State Tax Notes 251-280 (January 24, 2011), downloadable at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1741735.
Here’s more of the gambling story:
BY JANE STANCILL, http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/06/07/2120002/perdue-proposes-taxes-on-sweepstakes.html#storylink=cpy:
Gov. Bev Perdue said Thursday she’d like to see video sweepstakes outlawed once and for all, but as long as they’re legal, she wants to tax the games to fund the state’s public schools.
As budget talks continue in the Republican-led General Assembly, Perdue challenged lawmakers to squeeze a new source of state revenue out of the sweepstakes games.
“We need to tax the heck out of them and regulate them, regulate them hard,” said Perdue, a Democrat. Perdue said she is opposed to the sweepstakes parlors that now operate across North Carolina. But she said taxing them is a reasonable idea now that legislative leaders have dismissed her budget proposal. She had recommended a temporary sales tax increase to generate more money for public schools that she said had been hurt by budget cuts.
The Center for New Revenue 