Taxation is perhaps the main reason online casinos will ever receive regulation and legalization in the United States.  Online casinos are a very lucrative industry with almost endless growth potential and the industry is very young.  The longer the United States waits the further they will be on the outside from benefiting from the success of online casinos.

Although, strangely enough, the tax issue is rarely brought up on either side of the argument.  Supporters of online casinos, such as Congressman Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Service Committee, claims that legalizing online casinos is a matter of preserving personal freedom.  There is no doubt that Frank believes it is the right of an individual to gamble and spend the money in the ways they see fit.  But it is also like that he sees all of the potential tax revenue that could be going into federal coffers if only the government would legalize an activity already highly popular in the county.

The opponents are no more direct in their opposition of online casinos.  The problem for most politicians with online casinos is that most online casino operations are over seas.  Online gamblers are spending several dollars at overseas companies when they could be gambling in land based casinos here in the United States. 

In stead they argue that online casinos are dangerous to problem gamblers and children.  This reason is not like the most important, especially when it is obvious that problem gamblers and children would be made safer by legalizing online casinos.