I would not want to be a player who didnt pay their taxes on Full Tilt and Stars winnings and has not declared them as foreign accounts if this passes. Get to an accountant and get yourself clean PRONTO if this fits your situation.

Just previewed the members of the Committee on Ways & Means for the upcoming bill........

Looks pretty favorable for us w/ 26 Democrats vs 15 Republicans on the committee and also a Democratic Chair. I'm not a Democrat, but it seems that our results are more favorable when they hold the votes.

This makes us 60-40 fav's going to the flop, right?

They sometimes have to go to other votes or hearings.

Is this going to prevent 18-20 yo's from continuing to play poker?

anyone know of Bob Etheridge's viewpoints, he is the NC U.S. Rep

Id be floored if we cant get a bill out of this committee. We have some important changes that need making though, thats the tougher part.

About the 8% deposit tax, is that on the players every time they make a deposit?

For example, let's say I travel 2 months a year to France and have an account on FTP.fr since I can't play on the .net site (thank you, french gvnmt)

I obviously don't leave that part of my BR to rot for 10 months on the site, so I withdraw it every time I come back to the US and redeposit it here.

Does that mean that every single time I withdraw to redeposit the money I've already paid taxes on, I have to pay that 8% tax again??!

There are plenty of responses to this concern. The first is that Stars and Tilt will be dealing with the treasury lawyers. The Treasury lawyers will not be expert in the poker related laws of all 50 states. It is perfectly reasonable to believe that the federal government's lawyers will begin and end their inquiry as to whether a site violated a federal law.

The second answer to this is that states cannot assert jurisdiction (successfully) over conduct outside of their physical boundaries in the same way that the federal government can. Washington state cannot argue that a poker site based in the Isle of Man violates state law because it is accessible in Washington any more than they could argue that a site based in California violates Washington state law because it is accessible in Washington.

The last point is that UIGEA did not criminalize any payment processing other than for gambling that was already illegal under preexisiting state or federal law. so the "accepted or made payments," language gets you right back to points one and 2--stars and tilt didn't violate UIGEA by processing payments unless poker was already illegal before UIGEA.

There are a few articles about this. BusinessWeek has one at http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...-gambling.html.

Digg: http://digg.com/world_news/U_S_House...e_Online_Poker

The deposit tax is a site tax, not a player tax. Sites are not allowed to deduct this from deposits.

I imagine site taxes will be based on net deposits. In other words, if someone deposted $500, withdrew $200, then deposited $300, I believe the tax would be based on $600, not $800.

Thank god...and thank you for fighting for our rights all this time.

http://www.pokertableratings.com/blo...ittee-41-22-1/

i can't really tell from this if they are going to allow non us players :/

Great job PPA and everyone closely involved!

I'm not sure I understand why people even care about whether Stars and Tilt can get a license at this point. If they say they support the bill, which they do, that is a good sign for us. Then if everything passes it is up to them to worry about actually getting licensed. The poker world would survive without Stars and Tilt and they're 'big boys', let them worry about themselves! (Although I understand that their support of this bill is a good for the cause and the PPA.)

i'm curious about this as well.

TE quoted that they still back the Bill after the amendments....they pay a hefty price for legal counsel....I'd assume its safe to say they feel this will not be a problem....I'd say their legal team is better than whoever wrote this PTR article....just a guess.

wtf?

The 12th amendment was brought by Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, and stated that internet sites would be forbidden from allowing people who are delinquent on child support payments from gambling on their sites. This was a major sticking point from states that already imposed such rules from casinos with jackpots. Violating sites would lose their license for failure to comply. This amendment also passed.

This amendment was amended before it passed, and is subject to additional negotiation. We don't know the text of the Frank amendment to the Bachman amendment, but the gist of it was to change the amendment to one that required the sites to prevent people from playing if the sites were first notified that someone has a delinquent support obligation.

as amended, it is probably a good thing.

Clarification was added for this amendment. A state court, federal court or state agency has to notify the Treasury that someone is delinquent in their child support payments before they are added to the "self exclusion list", which gets them excluded from all licensed sites.

For summaries on each of the passed amendments, see this thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/57...2267-a-840228/

Does anyone know the breakdown of number of Democrats vs. Republicans supported this bill in cmte?

I noticed that he also voted Aye on Amendment 18, which gutted the entire bill and replaced it with verbiage that basically just strengthened UIGEA. Not sure what that was about.

jb

34 Dems, 7 Reps Aye
4 Dems, 18 Reps Nay

What, if anything, is going to stop sites licensed in other jurisdictions from continuing to serve the US market?

Committee memberships are based on party numbers, right now the dems have a decent advantage but come novenmer it will be close with a good chance the GOP takes over in Jan.

obg

The fact that it will be easy to deposit on licensed sites using Paypal type processors or maybe even cash cards bought at gas stations. The unlicensed sites will have processor issues, maybe even worse than now. If you could go to the local casino or lottery office and pick up your cashout now would you wait weeks for a check that may or may not bounce? Also deposit ease for fish should help with game quality of the licensed sites if they rake isn't so bad it kills everyone.

Edit: It looks like no credits card deposits will be allowed.