{"id":466,"date":"2025-07-09T13:18:57","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T13:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chuckwardrealestate.com\/?p=466"},"modified":"2025-09-22T12:09:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T12:09:23","slug":"even-senators-who-shaped-spending-bill-blindsided-by-gambling-measure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chuckwardrealestate.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/09\/even-senators-who-shaped-spending-bill-blindsided-by-gambling-measure\/","title":{"rendered":"Even Senators Who Shaped Spending Bill Blindsided by Gambling Measure"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><strong>Gambling loss deduction capped in last-minute Senate amendment<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Lawmakers say they never saw the provision before vote<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>FAIR BET Act aims to repeal \u201cpunitive\u201d tax change<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Many lawmakers say they were unaware that \u201cthe One Big Beautiful Act\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/gamblers-lose-big-as-trumps-first-major-bill-passed\/\">passed by Congress<\/a> last week included a provision that makes it harder for Americans to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/big-beautiful-bill-sports-betting-fears-overblown-says-analyst\/\">deduct gambling losses<\/a>. The measure is now under scrutiny as Democrats push to repeal it.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_357012\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-357012\" data-style=\"width: 858px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-post-thumbnail-858xAUTO wp-image-357012 lazyload\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" alt=\"Gambling tax deduction, Mike Crapo, FAIR BET Act, One Big Beautiful Bill, Dina Titus\" width=\"858\" height=\"644\" data-src=\"http:\/\/www.chuckwardrealestate.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Crapo-858x644-1.jpg\"><figcaption>Sen. Mike Crapo, above, tagged the gambling measure onto the sprawling Republican spending bill so quietly that even his fellow committee members knew nothing about it. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think anybody knew it was in there,\u201d Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) told <em>The HuffPost<\/em>. \u201cI talked to people on the conference committee. They said, \u2018We don\u2019t know where that came from.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"callout\">\n<p>Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) confirmed to the news website that they were surprised to learn that the provision existed, despite sitting on the Senate Finance Committee &#8212; the very panel that worked on the tax provisions of the omnibus bill.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know anything about it. I\u2019m not sure what it does,\u201d Cornyn confessed.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Crapo Clause<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>What it does, specifically, is raise gamblers\u2019 taxes by limiting how much of their losses they can deduct. Only 90% of losses will be deductible under the new rules, meaning even gamblers who break even could end up with a sizable tax bill.<\/p>\n<div class=\"callout\">\n<p>The gambling amendment wasn\u2019t in the original House version of the bill and appeared only in the final conference report after negotiations between the House and Senate. Slipped into a nearly 1,000\u2011page tax section, it escaped public scrutiny until the bill neared voting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>So where did it come from?<\/p>\n<p>The amendment was introduced by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, who was probably driven more by fiscal restraint than by any ideological opposition to gambling, although both factors may have played a role.<\/p>\n<p>The measure is estimated to generate $1.1\u202fbillion in tax revenues over eight years, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><strong>\u2018Sneaky\u2019 Change<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>As a state legislator in Idaho in the early 1990s, Crapo opposed casino-style gambling, supporting a constitutional amendment to ban it statewide. However, since arriving in the US Senate in 1999, he has shown little legislative interest in gambling matters and has remained largely silent on modern gambling policy. As of Wednesday, Crapo hadn&#8217;t commented publicly on the measure.<\/p>\n<p>But Titus, a longtime advocate for Nevada\u2019s gaming industry, described it as \u201ca sneaky, unnecessary change that hurts people in my district,\u201d adding that it was both \u201cpunitive\u201d and \u201cunfair.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"callout\">\n<p>On Monday, she introduced legislation, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/titus-fair-bet-act-garners-support-of-american-gaming-association\/\">the FAIR BET Act<\/a>, to repeal the provision. Her bill would restore the previous tax treatment for gamblers, allowing them to deduct 100% of their losses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cWe should be encouraging players to properly report their winnings and wager using legal operators. The Senate change will only push people to not report their winnings and to use unregulated platforms,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/even-senators-who-shaped-spending-bill-blindsided-by-gambling-measure\/\">Even Senators Who Shaped Spending Bill Blindsided by Gambling Measure<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\">Casino.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gambling loss deduction capped in last-minute Senate amendment Lawmakers say they never saw the provision before vote FAIR BET Act aims to repeal \u201cpunitive\u201d tax change Many lawmakers say they were unaware that \u201cthe One Big Beautiful Act\u201d passed by Congress last week included a provision that makes it harder for Americans to deduct gambling losses. The measure is now [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chuckwardrealestate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chuckwardrealestate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chuckwardrealestate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chuckwardrealestate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chuckwardrealestate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.chuckwardrealestate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":469,"href":"http:\/\/www.chuckwardrealestate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions\/469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chuckwardrealestate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chuckwardrealestate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chuckwardrealestate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chuckwardrealestate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}