Raising the gaming tax a matter of fairness

I apparently am the only person who can get Sherman Frederick, the publisher of the Review-Journal, and Brian Greenspun, the editor of the Las Vegas Sun and also a casino owner, to agree on anything: specifically, whether casinos in Nevada need to pay more in gaming taxes.

But, if we as Nevadans do not at least ask why casinos cry poverty in Nevada and try to convince us with their expensive media campaign that they cannot afford to pay more than a 6.75 percent gaming tax here when they willingly pay as high as 30 percent in Macau, or 35 percent in Indiana, and even more in Illinois, then all of us in Nevada deserve to be called mush heads.

In fact, these gaming companies seem driven to build casinos all over the United States and the world with billions of dollars of money taken out of Nevada. Go to their Web site, www.americangaming.org/Industry/state/statistics, and verify what they pay in other states if you don’t believe me.

It doesn’t take an Einstein to realize that 6.75 percent is less than 30 percent, or 35 percent, or even that it is less than the average tax that our casinos willingly pay in other states.

To illustrate further, we minions pay a 7.75 percent sales tax in Clark County, and yet the multibillion-dollar casinos in Nevada pay only a 6.75 percent gross gaming tax. They have avoided for years a fair tax, as they control the Legislature.

For example, how were they able to persuade the Legislature to effectively exempt golf courses from taxation in 2005? If that is not enough abuse, the few independent members of the Legislature tried to unwind this scam in the last session but backed down when the governor threatened a veto. You see what I mean.

Many Nevadans are losing their homes now. Removing all property taxes on residential homes seems more than fair. After all, we don’t own our own homes, we rent them from the government.

I am an old-fashioned Democrat, and I feel like a fish out of water in today’s political climate. I detest government waste and taxes and will join you any time to abolish most broken government agencies and departments as a total waste of money.

But this gaming tax needs adjusting, and that is a matter of fundamental fairness. Nevada is the mother of the now multibillion-dollar casino industry. Is this any way to treat your mother?

Have we had enough abuse? No wonder they brag that what happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas — except the money they take from us, which ends up going to the other states and China.

Kermitt L. Waters is preparing the Tax Fairness Reform Initiative, which would increase the state gaming tax and eliminate property taxes for owner-occupied homes.