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Comment by jareklupinski | Hacker News Reader

> companies need to pay 40-50% of their gross revenue to the government. That's comparable to tobacco.

taxing a vice is worth it on paper, but the second-order effects (nonstop alcohol ads, pervasive gambling app dark patterns) aren't worth it imo

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When was the last time you saw an ad for cigarettes?

Those second-order effects are easy to mitigate with sensible public policy. And it's not like we have to invent the solution from scratch — we've done it before, very effectively.

This is the correct reply to the constant "but whatabout" replies, that inevitably come up whenever you suggest regulation. "You've regulated bad thing X, but then they'll do Y!" So regulate Y! It's not like legislators only get one crack at a law. We should elect a government willing to move fast and iterate when loopholes are uncovered.

I mean if you're arguing an edge case you've already accepted the central point, so it's not like a response needs to be made. We handle edge cases.

The thing is that US Congress can't make laws. It just can't. It's nonfunctional. When it does that's the rare exception, and it better be perfect the first time because you won't get so lucky twice.

https://legiscan.com/US/legislation?status=passed

Seems like they can, or you mean they can't 'make laws' that you personally care about?

IMO this link proves the poster’s point. We are passing 1-2 laws a week. So far the 119th congress has passed 104 laws

100 years ago, the 69th congress passed over 1500 laws, plus hundreds of continuing resolutions, treaties, etc https://www.loc.gov/collections/united-states-statutes-at-la...

Cloudflare block page - I'm a bot. What does it say?

> When was the last time you saw an ad for cigarettes?

Today at the gas station on the outside of the pump and the store door.

I was at a gas station today that sells tobacco. No ads. Its because even displaying tobacco products, let alone advertising them, is not allowed in that jurisdiction.

I'll bet you didn't see any cartoon camels or doctors recomending a brand though, because even where tobacco ads are legal, many tobacco ads are no longer legal.

Whether you see ads, and what kind of ads you see is highly regulated. That's the whole point,

> I was at a gas station today that sells tobacco. No ads. Its because even displaying tobacco products, let alone advertising them, is not allowed.

We clearly don't live in the same states.

Sorry for the ninja edit about jurisdictions.

I live in a different country since we don't have states here.

> Those second-order effects are easy to mitigate with sensible public policy.

Regrettably, sensible public policy seems to be in remarkably short supply these days.

Do you watch movies?

after the first fifty years? :)

biological organisms develop addiction much faster than political processes

Aren't worth what? The tax? Or the vice being legal in the first place?

aren't worth the tax: no matter how high you set the tax, it won't offset the amount you have to spend on rehabilitating the effects of the vice

legality itself never stopped a vice from being indulged :) it's the cost / benefit that brings back repeat customers and encourages addictive behaviors

You can't tax revenue in sports gambling markets, it actually just leads to predatory gambling products with massive vig/house edge. This was attempted in Tennessee. Margins are extermely low sports betting, like 4.5%. Its actually a loss leader typically. So for casinos that only have this type of wagering it taxes like this aren't going to work. A casino might turn over 50 billion yearly but only have a 2.5% edge in sports betting but you're proposing we tax them on the 50 billion. It doesnt work.

It will either push them out of business, or they'll find a way to screw the player to increase margin through even more deceptive products.

If the legal entity can't operate because of a tax on revenue than illegal offshore entities will gladly take their place and do.

The only solution really is sharia law, a complete ban and harsh punsihments for all operators and customers. I say this ironically but it actually is really the only solution, and even this doesnt work entirely.

Sports betting was, if not prohibited, then highly-proscribed for most of my life. You could do it in a few places like OTB, go to Vegas, or deal with an illegal bookie. People still gambled, but this made the problem orders of magnitude smaller than it is today. We did not need Sharia law or the guillotine, just an existing system of laws that were generally highly workable. It is not helpful to pretend like we need wild solutions just to achieve results we’ve already achieved and maintained for decades.

I really dont think the problem has gotten worse, its just more visible. The previous status quo didnt work either, you just didnt hear as much about it because there weren't commercials.

In all reality, the NASDAQ does the entire yearly turnover Klashi and Polymarket combined in a few minutes. It hasnt become as big of a problem as people make it out, but its still a problem.

But there's no going back to the status quo with 1990s methods of enforcement. Everyone knows how to use crypto and VPNs, you'd just be pushing people into shady offshore.

> Everyone knows how to use crypto and VPNs,

Not everyone who has placed a bet on Kalshi or Polymarket necessarily knows how to use these tools.

> you'd just be pushing people into shady offshore.

Hurdles help. Not everyone will know how to jump every hurdle. Not everyone will be willing to put forth the effort. Will some people? Sure. But hurdles do cut down on the overall participation.

DraftKings alone is estimated to do $6.5bn in revenue in 2026, and the whole US segment is close to $20bn. This is the market that Kalshi et al. are targeting, and these are huge sums of money. You can make sports betting artificially look small by comparing it to the entire equities market (but why?!), however the more reasonable standard of retail product/entertainment companies these are big and rapidly growing businesses.

Why do you assume the tax is on bets and not on profits

Im replying to a comment that says it should be taxed on revenue.

The revenue of a sports book is the spread captured (vig) along with any losses/gains from an imbalanced book. The wagers are not counted as revenue. DKNG did $6B in revenue in 2025, if wagers were included that number would be a lot higher.

That being said I still don’t think taxing on revenue is a good idea.

People here have said even crazier ideas on HFT trading tax or wealth tax. People have lots of crazy ideas about taxation that clearly doesn't work. It's hard to tell if they don't get it or don't care because they actually just want it banned outright.

Few here would be a good politician or law maker.

Or maybe you're just assuming the stupidest possible versions of those ideas

They're all stupid relative to the posters understanding of tax law and finance, which on HN is pretty low.

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