Tucked away in an obscure provision of the latest federal budget was a long-desired line item. The Internal Revenue Service, in a concession to inflation, adjusted the so-called “IRS lockdown” threshold.
Hitherto, when a slot machine hit a jackpot of $1,200 or greater, it froze up so that IRS paperwork could be filled out prior to payment. Now, that threshold has been reset to $2,000 per jackpot, indexed annually to inflation.
“Initially, if you looked at the Big Beautiful Bill provision, that’s 70433, it says that they’re amending a provision of the tax law, to change reporting requirements. It wasn’t clear whether that applied to slot machines or not,” Rep. Dina Titus, a Democrat representing Nevada, explained to Casino Reports. “It took a while for the industry to decide that it did,” further delaying implementation…