Sports betting has been live in the state of North Carolina in some fashion for more than four years now. The Tar Heel State initially legalized the pastime in 2019, but the rule only applied to in person betting at sportsbooks and casinos located on native American reservations.
North Carolina governor Roy Cooper expanded those parameters significantly this past year, setting legislation in motion that will permit mobile Sportsbook to begin operating in early 2024.
No matter if you plan on placing bets at a mobile sportsbook yourself or if you never plan on taking part in the pastime, the upcoming legalization will affect the lives of everyone living in the Tar Heel State: here’s a look at how it will play out.
One of the most important things to keep an eye on as sports betting goes live is the various tax laws that bettors will have to comply with. The money you win on North Carolina Betting Sites counts as taxable income, just like the money you make from a traditional job. Similarly, you can write off the money you lose as a tax deduction, but you need to keep careful track of one of your transactions.
That’s because unlike your traditional 9 to 5, most betting sites won’t do the dirty work of figuring out your tax information for you. Unless you win massive amounts of money in one sitting or profit off of extremely long odds, betting sites aren’t required to give you a tax form to file.
Things can get even more complicated if you use a number of different sportsbooks — as many people like to do, hopping from app to app to take advantage of the different sign on bonuses each platform offers — because you’ll have to tabulate all those wins and losses together. It’s much easier to do that as you go along than it is to suddenly find out on April 14 that you have a lot more fiscal information to figure out… or worse, not realize you made a mistake until the IRS comes knocking.
In North Carolina, gambling winnings are taxed at a 5.25 percent rate; at the federal level, it’s based on your income, so you could potentially move up or down a tax bracket depending on how you perform.
Like I said earlier, you are going to see the positive effects of mobile gaming legalization even if you never place a bet yourself. That’s because state legislators are all too aware of the negative reputation that the gambling industry holds, and they want to make sure that they are giving back to their communities in order to balance out the potential downsides.
Per House Bill 347, the piece of legislation passed to legalize the pastime, the tax dollars that the state of North Carolina procures through their sports betting revenue levies will paid forward to populations in need; two million annually devoted to assisting those dealing with gambling addictions, one million annually to youth sports programs in the state, $3.9 million apportioned evenly between 13 universities and colleges in the state to supplement their athletic programs, and $1 million to the North Carolina Outdoor Heritage Advisory Council.
That only accounts for $8 million in revenue, and the state of North Carolina projects that they’ll be pulling in $100 million per year in revenue by 2027. As such, the remaining money left over will be divided up between state universities, state tourism and attractions funds, and the general budget.
Of all those stipulations, I’m particularly interested in seeing how the money apportioned to state school athletic programs ends up impacting the state economy. It’s a lot more fun to bet on your favorite team when they’re performing well than it is to bet against a team you like when they’re doing poorly.
These days, college sports are defined by the almighty dollar, and I’m curious to see if legal sports betting can usher in a new era of prosperity for college sports teams in the state of North Carolina. News broke earlier today that the NCAA is considering allowing schools themselves to pay athletes for their services, and if teams like the UNC Tar Heels are given a state approved budget to spend wildly and attract the best players around, we could see a positive feedback loop where more bets on a successful Tar Heels team mean increased success moving forward as the dollars find their way back to UNC’s coffers.