Edit: at least with state lotteries the state gets most of the money so it is more like a tax; in the case of corporate sports betting the corporation takes the money and then pays a small corporate tax on it.
And you're not weak willed are you? So nothing to worry about. Bad things only happen to bad people.
Though as I understand it much of money in gambling is made from "whales" - players who lose lots of money and keep playing anyway. The same term is used for f2p game players who spend a lot of money on in-app purchases, often tokens for virtual slot machines for desirable in-game items.
For modern gambling (not including some prediction market setups) its actually all of the people (still allowed to play), most of the time.
Because if you win regularly they limit or outright ban you from playing. If they keep letting you play they have determined algorithmically that you're statistically a loser over time.
So not only is this easy access to online/app-based gambling financially devastating for those predisposed to become addicted to it, its also effectively legally rigged in that the house has no obligation to take bets from people who are actually good at it, and they have all the data they need to detect that very quickly.
There are services called betting exchanges that essentially facilitate peer-to-peer gambling, they make money from commission so they don't care at all about your betting strategy, big players and companies are probably operating on those platforms.
Otherwise they wouldnt be able to give out "free bets money" for marketing purposes all the time as you could just play opposite bets on multiple platforms.
If you win $95 on one bet and lose $100 on another, you owe taxes on $5 of that $95.
If I understand correctly that’s no longer the case as “sports betting” prediction markets are now becoming a financial product.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-07-10/do-...
The main sportsbooks you see advertising on TV like Draft Kings, Fan Duel, etc are still the old sports betting model where you're betting against the house. That's still taxed as sports betting. Kalshi, Polymarket, and some smaller sports focused apps like NoVig and Sporttrade are prediction markets that allow sports predictions and those would allow a full write off.
That said, I've heard that most of the major sportsbooks like Draft Kings and Fan Duel are building out their own prediction market platforms, so I think it's only a matter of time until everyone is in that model. Even ignoring the tax implications, it's lower risk and more consistent revenue for the books since they can structure things so they make money on every trade (if they want).
That's because "tax the rich" is actually pretty bad tax policy because the rich really don't make a lot more income than the upper-middle to lower classes.
If you look at countries with robust social safety nets, they don't get there by taxing the rich.
So upper middle class ends up paying the bill.
But since they are such a large cohort, you cannot form a policy around increasing the burden on them. And after all, the tech family pulling $450k/yr are still a "working grunts".
So it's all eye's on the top 1%, but a true wealth gap fix would actually come mostly from harvesting the wealth of the top 20-30%.
England managed to confiscate the estates of its major lords through the inheritance tax.
The rich can leave, but they can't take their house with them.
Sufficiently high LVT will deter speculation, leading to collapse in land price and encouraging efficient usage of land and drastically affecting our political landscape.
The problem is that the rich are ultra mobile, just like their capital, so unless you restrict that they’ll just move somewhere else where taxes are low.
So countries basically end up competing with each other by lowering taxes to attract them while destroying their middle classes..
Same more or less applies to companies
Do they, though? The vig is 10%, very transparently shown in the odds, and paid immediately. It proves very little disincentive. The tax is paid annually and only if you win; for most people, it is 0%. Are we really going to argue that the tax is a serious factor in discouraging the behavior?
That's not the gambling-activity-specific taxes that Stoller's article discusses - typically applied to gambling businesses' revenues, not bet winners specifically.