According to a recent local news story, the cost of vending decals is about to triple in Oklahoma. Vending decals are the stickers you see on arcade games and jukeboxes and pool tables. Each sticker is good for a year, and is required to be placed on “every coin-operated music or amusement device that requires a quarter or more.”
Currently, a sticker costs $50. Last month, the Oklahoma House and Senate passed a bill that will triple that cost, to $150 per machine. Let’s say for example a laundromat has three machines inside for kids to play. That’ll be $450/year, just in vending stickers. Since most locations split the take 50/50 with machine owners, those three machines will need to be played 3,600 times a year ($450*4*2) just to cover the cost of the stickers. That of course doesn’t include repairs, upkeep, or, you know, any profit.
According to the story on KFOR:
Senator Mike Johnson’s name appears on this bill so we contacted him to ask about the sudden increase. He said lawmakers simply had to come up with new revenue to make up for the shortfall in the state budget and this is one of the ways they’re doing it.
If anything, I suspect 2/3 of the machines you see out “in the wild” will soon disappear. The state will make the same amount of money (or less), and the biggest losers will be people like me who always keep a few spare quarters in their pocket just in case they happen across an old arcade game. Places like Celebration Station and Chuck E. Cheese probably won’t close down, but if their operating costs triple, you can bet that increase will get passed on to you.
Is this a great state or what? Sometimes, not so much.
Amazing how out of touch the policymakers are with reality.
… or the biggest winners will be people like you, that buy the machines businesses can’t afford to pay the taxes on.
The people that run things really don’t think things through very much, do they?
What a stupid way to raise money, by hundred-dollar-billing the nickel-and-dime (quarter, more accurately) folks.
Unreal in its sheer stupidity. They tripled it! I mean, the fact that there’s a fee for an entertainment service that hasn’t seen its cost of play rise with inflation is unbearable, and unbelievably unjust… but then they went and tripled it. Not a 10% increase, or 20%, but 300%. Infuriating.
Rob, just wanted to highlight to your readers the impact this is going to have.
I have a ms pacman/galaga machine in a pizza hut. Pizza hut is considered a “good” location. its not some backstreet laudry or shady bar. The machine made me $26 last month. So I get $13 and pizza hut get $13. The month before that it made $22. The tax stamp is $12.50 a month.
So last month thanks to the state tax people I made 50c.
and thats before I take off my gas, any repairs and expense.
Fortunatley I replaced the sticker by June 30th which means it was only $50, but next year.. well me and all the other operators in the state will be offloading games to ebay and craiglist for sure. There is no more business to be done.
Of course chucky cheese and co will remain open, the 600% profit magins on the pizza and partys will cover the extra expense. but for the local game operator this is the final nail in the coffin…
how does the goverment seriously expect to increase revenue by puting people out of business? Did they not research this?
Since its impossible to keep tabs on how many quaters an amusement device takes, I understand the tax decal to be a form of sales tax for game machines.
Can you imagine the publice anger if sales tax tripled?
Howcome all those casino slot machines dont require tax stamps? dont even get me started on that….
Game over? Brad Henry thinks so…
ps: Arcade machines for sale. Business Closure forces sale.
contact me for more details. and yes im serious…