Promotional awards that casinos give to slot machine players can be subtracted from slot machine revenues for tax purposes, the state Supreme Court has ruled.
In a split decision issued April 28 in Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment v. Pennsylvania Department of Revenue, a majority of the high court held that the state’s Gaming Act does not prohibit casinos from subtracting the cost of promotional awards from the calculation of the gross terminal revenue for purposes of slot machine taxes, as long as the promotions were given out to those actually playing on the machines. The decision reverses the Commonwealth Court, which had held that the act indicated all exempt revenues needed to be measurable by a central control computer system and needed to be tied to a specific machine.
