Here's the email I sent to our various WA State legislators. For the WA situation, I believe it is our best hope. Money talks.
Instead of banning online poker, the states should tax it and add to their revenues. There is a very straightforward method for doing this. All poker sites charge a tourney fee, or for cash ring games, a rake. They also track all the fees for each player and award Player Points to players for the fees collected. States can require that the players from their state pay a sales tax on their fees. The poker sites would require players from the taxing state to pay the sales tax and not allow players to play if they don’t agree to the tax. Then the poker sites, in order to be licensed in the particular state, would agree to collect the taxes and pay them to the state. As an example, when I was playing online, I would accumulate about 3,000 Player Points each month. That equates to $120 in fees. At a 9% sales tax, that equals $10.80 each month that would go to the state treasurer. That tax would simply be deducted from my cash account at the poker site. All the accounting for this taxing method is in place at every poker site--they keep meticulous records. The sites know the exact locale of each player because each ISP (Internet Service Provider) address has a location identification attached to it, and it is displayed to the poker site when the player signs on. I wonder if legislators realize that online poker is almost a yearly billion-dollar business, and the potential tax income is significant.