Caesars Entertainment Corp. are the latest company to admit they want a piece of the Toronto casino market. Executive VP Jan Jones reported that the company is interested in building a resort and investing some $1 billion in doing so, according to the Toronto Sun. She added: “We believe we could present a project that would benefit the city, that would grow tourism and that would be a part of the business community, not come in and try to replace businesses,” Jones said Tuesday.
Representatives from the company are planning to visit the city next week and Caesars have already hired four lobbyists at City Hall. They’re interest in either Exhibition Place or the Waterfront as their location. MGM Resorts are another to be interest in the Canadian city and whichever company the gaming board partner with will be internationally renowned.
Figures from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) show that their tax revenue is the largest of all the U.S.A.’s gaming regulatory regimes. The state’s 10 casinos contributed some $1.5 billion to state coffers in 2011 – more than Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware all put together and they explained that it’s the rate that sets them apart.
“Pennsylvania leads and it’s not even close,” said Richard McGarvey, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. “That’s what happens when you have a 56 percent tax rate in a state this big.”
This is obviously completely against the max 20 percent tax that the American Gaming Association agrees with for sustainable economic development and Pennsylvania still only takes $3 billion in revenue compared with Nevada’s $11 billion.
