Alex Waldrop, President and CEO of the NTRA, appeared at a June 17 hearing in Washington, D.C. conducted by the U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The hearing addressed proposed changes to regulations related to withholding and reporting of winning pari-mutuel wagers and also included topics related to keno, bingo and slot machine players. Waldrop’s appearance on behalf of NTRA members and the horse racing industry was part of the NTRA’s ongoing effort to modernize current IRS regulations relating to withholding and reporting.
The NTRA’s proposed changes would clarify withholding and reporting rules by defining the “amount of the wager” to include all of a bettor’s investment into a single pari-mutuel pool, and not simply the base amount of the winning combination. These updates would directly benefit pari-mutuel customers by reducing burdensome tax obligations while also lessening racing’s competitive disadvantage against other forms of gaming that are not subject to the same aggressive tax treatment.
The hearing followed a 90-day public comment period in which dozens of related organizations wrote letters to Treasury on behalf of the NTRA’s proposed changes and 11,665 supportive comments were submitted by individual horseplayers, fans and stakeholders.