The Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative is a new law that is currently being worked on that will provide both negative and positive reactions from all types of poker players in online poker rooms and casinos.  On the negative side, the law requires a 2% tax on the deposits made by online poker players in their online poker rooms and casinos.  This 2% tax will go towards funding future programs that help to rehabilitate problem gamers and prevent underage gambling as well as provide a host of other tracking and enforcement features for the government to utilize when interacting with online poker rooms and casinos.  Many users will not be happy about paying a 2% tax on their deposited poker funds, as some poker deposits can grow quite large.  In fact, many users have more than $1 million tied up in various online poker room and casino accounts such as Fulltiltpoker.com.

On a positive note, by taxing the users of online poker rooms and casinos, rather than prohibiting and restricting their use altogether, paints a positive picture of the future of online poker rooms and casinos.  With the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, many critics complain that a valuable source of revenue, online poker rooms and casinos, were being forced out of the United States and into other, more gaming friendly areas, such as Costa Rica, Aruba and Antigua.  Financial experts consider it to be fiscal suicide to not only give up such a spectacular source of tax revenue, but actively encourage the online poker room and casino gaming establishments to set up in another country and still take advantage of the United States online poker room and casino established user base to generate revenue.

While taking a step in the right direction with the 2% tax on online poker room deposits and being more lenient in allowing interaction between poker rooms and American banking institutions is a big step for the United States government, it is still a very small and less than effective method of tapping into the available tax revenue of online poker rooms and casinos.  In order to truly benefit from the maximum profits from online poker rooms and casinos, it would be far more effective to simply allow poker rooms to operate inside the United States and tax them in the same manner that traditional facilities are taxed.