Voters In Nevada Are Keen On Casino Tax Hike To Fund State Educational Budget

Summary

• Nevada survey shows voters in favour of a casino tax hike
• Proposed tax hike is to get more money flowing into educational state budget
• Casino operators will not be very happy with suggested tax hike

Nevada depends heavily on its tourist and land based casino gaming markets. Both markets have been devastated over the last 24 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdowns that followed and the social distancing regulations that were put in place once the lockdown was lifted.

The state has taken a huge financial hit during the last two years and the state government is now looking for ways to bring in more money to its state coffers.

Voters Open To Raising Casino Tax

Nevada has a thriving casino business because it has one of the friendliest tax gaming laws in the country. That could change very soon as voters in Nevada seem to be in favour of raising tax gaming laws to fund the state educational budget.

The Nevada Independent and OH Predictive Insights carried out a new poll which showed that voters appear to be in favour of a tax increase that is backed by the union. The union is pushing for the top casino operators in the state to contribute more to pump funds into public educational budgets.

The survey was based on the votes of 755 registered voters in the state who sent in their votes during Jan 19 to 26. The results of the survey have a 3.5 percent margin of error. The question posed to the voters in the survey was whether they would support a casino tax increase from a current 6.75% to a 9.75%.

The results showed that 59 percent of those who voted were in favour of the tax hike while 25 percent were opposed. However, 14 percent out of the 25 percent who said they were opposed claimed that they would probably vote against it, which meant that they could be swayed either way.

Casino Operators Not Happy

Casino operators in Nevada are not very happy to see the push for a tax rate hike gaining momentum. The Nevada Resort Association (NRA) tried to legally stop this proposed tax rate hike in 2020 when it first started gaining momentum claiming that casino operators would be asked to increase their taxes by 44 percent!