New York State Senator John Bonacic has introduced a new bill that will legalise certain online poker activities in the US state.
Bill S05302 would allow for operators to offer online poker games that require skill to players in New York.
The bill also sets out a proposal for operators to be taxed at a rate of 15% and for the state to cap the number of online poker operators in the state at a maximum of 10.
The introduction of the new bill comes after Senator Bonacic last year failed in an effort to legalise online poker through the submission of a previous bill.
The new bill features many of the same requirements as the first bill, but does omit a ‘bad actor’ clause that would block operators that breached the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 from applying for licences.
PokerStars and Full Tilt are amongst the major operators that would have been blocked form the application under the previous bill.
The new bill states that such operators will be able to apply for a licence, which will be available at a one-time cost of $10 million (€8.9 million).
“New York courts have interpreted New York law to apply to a more rigorous test in identifying a ‘contest of chance’ than is applied by most states in this nation and the courts have found that where a contest pits the skill levels of the players against each other, those games are games of skill and not games of chance,” Bonacic’s bill said.
source : www.igamingbusiness.com
