In Illinois, anyone who makes over $600 in sports bets will now need to report their winnings to the state. These earnings will be taxed at 15%.
Nicholas Royer, a financial advisor of MRFC, said sports betting is a business for some people and the state saw it as an opportunity to earn from it as well.
Royer said he knows people will not be happy with a high tax rate and this is just the beginning of the state looking for more streams of revenue.
“What happened is the state realized that 94% of sports gambling is now done online. And so they looked at this as, Oh, it’s a revenue that we can create for ourselves now that this is actually happening,” Royer said.
“Illinois is the fourth biggest in online gambling and sports betting right now in the country. Only behind Nevada, I think New Jersey and Pennsylvania. So it’s a pretty big deal and if we just look at September to October, just in that timeframe from September to October. There was a 42% increase in sports in sports gambling online,” Royer added.
Royer said anyone who might try and get away without filing their earnings have a good chance of getting caught due to tracking payments online through sports betting websites.
