Supreme Court strikes down increase in taxes for horse and dog tracks

The Iowa Supreme Court today struck down parts of state law that taxed gambling at Iowa’s three racetrack casinos at a higher rate than casinos on riverboats. Bruce Wentworth is General Manager of Dubuque Greyhound Park, one of the racetrack casinos. He says the court found no rational reason for a difference in tax rates between the different kinds of casinos. Wentworth doesn’t anticipate the ruling making an immediate difference in operations.When racetracks began to offer gambling in 1995, the law set a tax of 20-percent for them, and the law set that rate to escalate by two-percent per year, up to the current year when they’re paying 32-percent and facing a 36-percent rate before long, at least up until today’s ruling. Wentworth says the state’s three racetrack casinos formed an alliance to file the lawsuit that challenged that law. The Supreme Court’s decision remands the case to a district court, which will consider the high court’s statements about the case when it considers what to do next. The state Supreme Court ruling finds racetracks and riverboats are of the same class when it comes to being a taxable entity, and says there’s no understandable reason to apply different tax rates to the slot machines at the land-based casinos and those on boats. (on the web: see rulings of the court at www.judicial.state.ia.us)