US casino lobby seeks feds’ clarification on marijuana money

The US commercial casino lobby group wants the federal government to clarify its position on whether gaming operators can accept marijuana money at their tables and slots.

On Monday, the American Gaming Association (AGA) wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in response to the Treasury Department’s request for comments about federal regulations that can be “eliminated, modified or streamlined in order to reduce burdens” on industry.

Among the regulations that the AGA would like to see revised is the threshold for casinos to file Currency Transaction Reports (CTR). The current $10k threshold for cumulative transactions over a 24-hour period was imposed in 1972, and the AGA believes this should be increased to $60k to reflect the rate of inflation.

The AGA says the current threshold is so low that it “effectively captures transactions of little or no value to law enforcement” while noting that the casino industry files an estimated 1m CTRs per year, with each CTR taking about “45 minutes of effort” to compile.