Online gambling is a multi-billion dollar industry. If you look at statistics page on some of the most popular casino websites, you'll see astonishing figures. The overall amount of money paid out to players within just one month is almost 32 million GBP. This means just one site pays out over 1 million per day, over 50,000 per hour. If you consider the fact that people lose much more often than they win, the amount of money that online casino operators should get is unbelievable.

Now can you imagine the government officials watching this turnover and not wanting to dip their fingers into the pot? Certainly not! If something can be taxed, it should be taxed. The funniest thing is that online casinos appeared before the online gambling law was invented. Thus, the industry was regulated by some of the older rules that were more or less applicable to a new type of entertainment, while some of the aspects remained literally uncontrolled.

It is nearly impossible to supervise online casinos for one simple reason: it's hard to control anything on the web. Yet, the government wants to benefit from the successful business – tax the casinos and tax the winnings. But politics is a tricky thing; the head of the state can't just appear on one the morning TV shows and say "Dear fellow countrymen, from now on you'll have to pay!" It's not medieval times when things like this could have been done easily (without the TV bit, of course). However banning something that can affect the government's plan is simple.

That's what we see happening in the United States. It is obvious that officials are playing their own games while millions of people can't afford to do something that is perfectly legal in other civilised countries. The government is interested in making online gambling legal, but they want to make maximum profit from this legalisation. Without any doubt, there's huge money involved and casino operators will have to pay a lot before they will be able to officially start paying taxes.

While gamblers in most European countries can pretty much freely enjoy an online poker tournament or online roulette, some EU members try to outlaw online casinos that operate outside the borders of their state. The reason never changes – it is money. They don't want online gambling to be run along the same guidelines as the free market that operates throughout the EU, because in this case their state-owned online casinos will have to compete against foreign casinos. Well, as long as at least local sites are accessible, Europeans will probably not get too upset by these restrictions.