Maybe I'm misunderstanding the case people make for legalizing gambling and then taxing it, but my understanding is that winnings from gambling would also be taxed as income. I don't like that idea. I'm okay taxing casinos like you would any other business. I'm not okay taxing them more than any other business. I hate when government gets in the business of picking winners and losers or who it thinks it can bilk more from than others. I prefer they just stay out of that game altogether and tax all businesses and citizens equally if you're going to tax them.
I have a real issue with the way we view taxes in America anyway as it flies in the face of my views on the purpose of government. The way we approach taxes assumes the government has an ownership stake in the products of our labor, and therefore in our property. Government is supposed to exist to protect us and our private property from those malefactors who would do harm to either. That view of the purpose of government contravenes our acceptance of taxes as they have come to be in America.
I get that we need to pay taxes in some form to sustain a government robust enough to accomplish that stated purpose. But I don't believe taxing income, property, capital gains, etc. are the proper ways to generate that revenue. Taxes on those things converts the government into the malefactor from whom it is supposed to protect us.
In this sense, I'm opposed to business taxes too at the federal level. I won't presume to tell a local or county government they couldn't tax a casino in their jurisdiction to offset whatever it determines to be countervailing social costs of it operating in their area. If the local government sets that price too high the casino is free to relocate to a less onerous locale. Maybe a trucking company gets taxed at the state level to compensate for road maintenance based on miles driven a weights hauled or a manufacturing company gets taxed at the local level for the waste it generates per unit produced. I can understand taxes like that, but not a federal tax just because you had the audacity to take two things that had little value and put them together with ingenuity to create a lot of value.
If I created the value it is mine; I shouldn't be compelled to share it with every other American (and undocumented patron of government largess) who contributed absolutely nothing to my effort. That's awfully presumptuous of government to presume it has a claim on a portion of anything we create. We created government; it did not create us. The way I see it, we shouldn't owe it nearly as much as it owes us. We've got that paradigm totally arse backwards. We also miss the mark pretty badly on what we owe to our Creator in contrast to what we presume to claim He owes us, but that's a totally different rant albeit related to our darned up views of things.
/rant
My apologies HASMSP.
