Bill to Amend Atlantic City Casino Property Taxes Work in Progress

NOTE: This clause has been updated to shine that Assemblyman Armato said prior to Atlantic Ocean County Executive Dennis Levinson’s strong response to his gambling casino holding assess greenback that the legislation was non final.

Assemblyman John Armato (D-Atlantic), the pencil lead patronise of lawmaking to castrate how prop taxes for Atlantic Ocean City casinos are calculated, says the visor is a do work inward progress.

Assembly Bill 5587 is intentional to assist Atlantic City’s Nina from Carolina casinos inwards the wake of COVID-19. The legislating would shut porcine gaming revenue (GGR) derived from online gaming and mobile sports betting from the PILOT program.

PILOT is the payment-in-lieu-of-taxes bill that was passed in 2016 and readiness to extend 10 years. It affords casinos the right on to pay off belongings taxes based on their yearly GGR. The program was initiated in response to casinos intriguing their assessed resort values inwards the backwash of the Great Recession and five casinos closure betwixt 2014 and 2016.

PILOT mandates that the casinos compensate $120 1000000 every year inward land and local attribute taxes. That list increases as gambling casino revenue climbs. Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson opposes Armato’s note on grounds that it testament permit casinos to compensate fewer dimension taxes, and subsequently demarcation line belongings assess succour for residents.

Casinos Benefit at Taxpayers’ Expense?

Levinson, Atlantic County’s longtime executive, says Armato’s vizor would wounded local residents, and they, too, endured a most hard 2020.

It will benefit the casinos at the expense of the non-casino taxpayers by removing a immense and steady increasing portion of the revenues,” Levinson said. “The red ink inwards attribute tax relief could follow millions of dollars.”

Armato says the bill’s details are fluid. He noted that zilch is countersink inward stone.

“As anyone who understands the legislative unconscious process knows, you bring out a patch of legislation, deliberate and discuss it, and so you read the final result of those conversations into consideration when deciding how to move forward,” Armato explained this week. “This is called governing responsibly.”

Levinson questioned that statement.

“Why would you introduce a billhook that’s nowhere close what they want? They got caught. Nobody was supposed to see this. They were going to bear on it through and get a ready vote,” Levinson contended.

iGaming Revenues

Brick-and-mortar gambling casino revenues were devastated by the coronavirus. Slot machines and tabularise games at the Atlantic Ocean City casinos won $1.5 one million million last-place twelvemonth — land 44 percent from 2019.

iGaming, meanwhile, flourished. GGR from interactive slots and tables more than doubled to $931.5 million. Fees from salamander games climbed 85 percent to $38.8 million. Sportsbooks won $398.5 1000000 from bettors. And the vast legal age — over 90 percent — was generated online.

Profits for the 9 casinos plunged to a greater extent than 80 percent lastly year. It would hold been far worsened if non for their online operations.

Casinos, however, peak to the fact that they don’t maintain nearly as a great deal of the online GGR as they make from brick-and-mortar play. Casinos deal profits from internet gaming and sports betting with their third-party operators.

Hard Rock Atlantic Ocean City President Joe Lupo opined latterly that New Jersey should alter the path casinos written report their GGR.

“We want to ascertain the urban center revitalized, and it’s non going to materialize when the media is reporting [GGR] increases when they add together inwards online revenue that is going to third-party companies that don’t make a post inward the [Atlantic City] game,” Lupo stated.