Vermont Slot Casinos And Where The Machines Actually Are
Vermont slot casinos do not exist. No commercial floor, no tribal floor, no racino, no bank of cabinets in the back of a bar. The count is zero, and unlike most zeroes on this subject it has never been anything else.
What separates Vermont from the other states without casinos is where the prohibition sits. Most states license venues and simply decline to license this one. Vermont went after the box itself. Title 13 makes it an offense to lease, rent, sell or offer a coin-operated device with an element of chance in it, and a second section reaches anyone who keeps one where the public can get to it. Rename the room, incorporate as a club, run the profits to a charity: the cabinet stays illegal.
Bovada Casino
Slots.lv
Cafe Casino
Ignition Casino
So a search for casinos with slots in Vermont deserves two answers rather than one. What Vermont law says, in sections you can pull up and read for yourself. And where the closest reels actually sit, which for most Vermonters means a drive of anywhere from five minutes to three hours, into four jurisdictions running four different rulebooks. Ages, taxes, the online picture and the parts of this subject that other pages get wrong come after that.
Vermont Slots At A Glance
Everything in the table below traces to a Vermont statute or a state agency, and the rest of the page shows the work.
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Gambling in Vermont, by category
Commercial casinos None. No licensing framework exists to create one.Tribal casinos None. No federally recognized tribe holds land or a compact in Vermont.Racinos or slot parlors None. Section 2153 bars anyone from holding, conducting, operating or simulcasting a pari-mutuel race for public exhibition.Legal slot machines anywhere None, with a narrow exception for pre-1954 machines nobody runs for gambling.State-licensed online casino None, and no bill authorizing one has advanced.Online sports betting Live since January 11, 2024. Mobile only, three apps, minimum age 21.State lottery Live since February 14, 1978. Retail only, roughly 600 agents. Minimum age 18.Charitable gaming Open to qualifying nonprofits, including bingo, raffles, card games, break-open tickets and casino nights. Machines specifically excluded.Regulator Department of Liquor and Lottery for wagering and lottery; Attorney General for charitable gaming and fantasy contests.
What Vermont Law Calls A Slot Machine
The definition is old, broad and mechanical, which is exactly why it still works. Nothing in it turns on what a machine is called or who takes the profit.
The device itself
Under 13 V.S.A. section 2135(a), nobody may lease, rent, let on shares, sell, expose for sale or offer any of three things.
- A machine that takes a coin or object and, through mechanical or electrical force, returns money, a slug, a token, or a memorandum calling for money, credit, merchandise or property.
- A coin or slot machine, pinball machine, racing machine or device of like character in which any element of chance enters, whether played for money, checks, credits or merchandise.
- Any machine or device of any kind by whose operation there is an element of chance for winning or losing money or anything of value.
That third clause closes the door. A drafter in the 1950s could not have pictured a video reel or a skill-stop cabinet, and the language does not care. If chance decides whether value comes out, the statute reaches it.
Keeping one, and what happens to it
Section 2136 punishes anyone who possesses such a machine, controls one, or permits one to sit in a place of public resort. Section 2137 then does something most state codes do not: it directs a sheriff, deputy, constable or police officer to seize the machine without a warrant on finding it in a place of public resort, and to summon the owner to court to show cause why it should not be destroyed.
Win that hearing and the state destroys the machine under section 2138 and keeps whatever money sits inside it. The fine underneath all of this runs to $100 or six months under section 2139, small money by any modern standard. The penalty was never the deterrent here. Losing the hardware is.
The 1954 line
One exception sits in the same section that bans everything else. Subsection 2135(b) lifts the whole chapter off slot machines manufactured before 1954, provided nobody operates them for gambling purposes. An antique dealer restoring a Mills Black Cherry falls outside the ban. The moment that machine takes money on a bar top, it stops being an antique and becomes a violation.
The section that reaches the player
Most state gambling codes chase operators and leave players alone. Vermont wrote section 2141 the other way. A person who wins or loses money by play or hazard at any game, or by betting on it, faces a fine of not less than $10 and not more than $200. That provision sits on the books today, and it matters further down this page, because it reaches the person at the keyboard as readily as the person running the game.
Charity Casino Nights Run In Vermont. Reels Never Do.
Vermont lets qualifying nonprofits hold what the statute openly calls casino events, and plenty of fire departments and fraternal halls do. Then section 2143(d)(4) defines a casino event so that it excludes precisely the games banned by subdivisions 2135(a)(1) and (2), which is the drafting equivalent of writing “blackjack yes, reels no” into the exemption.
The Attorney General’s gambling summary puts it in plainer language, naming slot machines and mechanical gambling devices such as “Cherry Master” and “Money Machines” as prohibited. Vermont demands no license at all to run games of chance as a nonprofit, which surprises people, though a liquor-licensed premises needs a permit before hosting one, and anyone manufacturing or distributing break-open tickets for resale needs a separate license under Title 31.
The limits a Vermont casino night runs under
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Frequency and prize caps under 13 V.S.A. § 2143
Casino events per nonprofit No more than one in any calendar monthEvents at a nonprofit-owned venue Two per calendar month, at least 10 days apartEvents at any other venue One per calendar quarter, or three per year at least 15 days apartOrdinary games of chance Two days per calendar week per organization and per locationAgricultural fairs Up to 12 consecutive days once each yearStandard prize ceiling $400 for a single gameRaised ceilings $1,000 once a day, $5,000 once a month, and one vehicle, firearm, motorcycle or watercraft up to $50,000 a yearEscape hatch Four days a year may exceed those caps, at least 20 days apart, with total prizes that day under $50,000
Two further rules catch people out. Nobody may work a game and play in a game run by the same organization on the same day, and a nonprofit may spend no more than $15,000 a year across everyone who helps run its games, with $2,000 the ceiling for any one person.
No Compact, No Tribal Floor
The route that put 1,600 machines in Hogansburg and thousands more in Connecticut is closed in Vermont for a reason that has nothing to do with gambling policy. Class III gaming under federal law needs a federally recognized tribe, land held in trust and a compact negotiated with the state. Vermont has no federally recognized tribe.
Vermont recognized the Elnu Abenaki Tribe and the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation on April 22, 2011, and the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi and the Koasek Traditional Band on May 7, 2012, and the four recognitions sit in 1 V.S.A. chapter 23. State recognition carries real consequences for education funding, arts and burial protections. It carries no gaming authority whatsoever. Any page listing Vermont tribal casinos is inventing them.
The Closest Slot Machines To Vermont
Where you live in Vermont decides your answer completely, and the state runs long enough that Brattleboro and Newport are not choosing between the same rooms. Distances below are approximate driving distances, machine counts come from the properties or their regulators, and every age is the venue’s own published rule.
Across the Connecticut River, and the rest of the compass
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Revo Casino, West Lebanon NH
- Drive 5 min from White River Junction
- Machines 136
- Minimum age 21
- What the machines are Historic horse racing cabinets and video lottery terminals
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Casino de Montreal, Quebec
- Drive ~95 mi from Burlington
- Machines 3,000+
- Minimum age 18
- What the machines are Full random-outcome slot floor and 84 tables; passport required
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Akwesasne Mohawk Casino, Hogansburg NY
- Drive ~125 mi from Burlington
- Machines 1,600 by its own count
- Minimum age 18
- What the machines are Class III tribal slot floor
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Saratoga Casino Hotel, Saratoga Springs NY
- Drive ~70 mi from Rutland
- Machines 1,200+
- Minimum age 18
- What the machines are Video lottery terminals and electronic tables, no live dealers
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Rivers Casino, Schenectady NY
- Drive ~95 mi from Rutland
- Machines 1,150
- Minimum age 21
- What the machines are Commercial slot floor with 60-plus live tables
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MGM Springfield, Springfield MA
- Drive ~60 mi from Brattleboro
- Machines 1,500+
- Minimum age 21
- What the machines are Commercial resort floor, 120 tables and a 23-table poker room
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Turning Stone, Verona NY
- Drive ~195 mi from Burlington
- Machines 2,000+
- Minimum age 21
- What the machines are Full resort, Oneida Indian Nation
Two things in that table deserve more attention than they get. The nearest machines to a large share of Vermonters sit at Revo in West Lebanon, minutes across the river from White River Junction, and Revo’s own site sets 21 even though other New Hampshire rooms admit players at 18. And MGM Springfield illustrates why counts on this subject need dating: its opening plans quoted 2,550 machines, while the casino’s current jackpot notices describe a floor of more than 1,500.
Why a New Hampshire cabinet is not quite a slot machine
New Hampshire built its gaming halls on historic horse racing terminals. The cabinet looks like a slot machine and the reels spin like one, but the outcome derives from archived race results distributed through a pari-mutuel pool rather than an independent draw on your spin. Since July 2025 the state has allowed operators to swap those terminals for video lottery terminals, so one room can now hold both kinds, and the sign on the machine is the only way to tell them apart.
The charitable structure stays the same either way. New Hampshire routes 35 percent of a venue’s gaming revenue to registered nonprofits and 10 percent to the state lottery, table game wagers cap at $50, and statute caps how many halls the state will license. It is a genuinely different animal from the Massachusetts and New York commercial floors, and worth knowing before you drive there expecting one.
What “Online Slots In Vermont” Actually Means
Vermont licenses online sports betting and nothing else. Act 63 of 2023 built a mobile-only sportsbook market through contracts rather than open licensing, DraftKings, FanDuel and Fanatics went live on January 11, 2024, and the enabling law never mentions a casino game.
The carve-out proves the point. Section 1306 of 31 V.S.A. chapter 25 switches off the gambling chapter for sports wagering and fantasy contests specifically. Everything that chapter does not name stays under Title 13, where the machine ban lives and section 2141 still sits. A reel does not turn lawful in Vermont because a sportsbook app did.
So what are Vermonters actually using
Offshore casinos, which hold no United States regulation and take Vermont players with no Vermont authority standing behind them. No state agency inspects the games, no complaint route reaches a Vermont desk, and the operator wrote its own dispute clause. Vermont has taken no public enforcement action against one, and an absence of enforcement is not permission.
State enforcement here looks smaller and more domestic. On May 19, 2026, an investigator from the Department of Liquor and Lottery executed a search warrant at an Essex Junction home after neighbors complained about traffic, and seized poker tables, gambling materials and alcohol from a high-stakes home game. That is the Vermont enforcement record on unlicensed gambling: a house on Upland Road, not an offshore lobby.
Which Offshore Casinos Take Vermont, And The Big One That Does Not
Every figure below comes from the operator’s own published pages, read on August 3, 2026. The rule we apply everywhere applies here too: a casino whose own terms exclude your state scores nothing for you, whatever it scores for a reader two states over.
Bovada blocks Vermont, and disagrees with itself about it
Bovada is the brand most Vermont pages recommend first, and its live help center names Vermont among twenty restricted jurisdictions. Its Terms of Service PDF, updated January 3, 2024, lists only five excluded states and leaves Vermont off. Two documents from one company, flatly contradicting each other. The help center list governs at signup, so we treat Vermont as excluded and we will not rate around it.
The three that accept Vermont
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Slots.lv
Vermont status Nothing on its accepted-players page shuts Vermont out. That page bars five states, Delaware, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey and New York, and adds Quebec and Nova Scotia.License Names the Curacao Gaming Authority and prints the number, OGL/2024/670/0711, in its own text.Welcome offer Fund with crypto and the match reaches 200 percent of the deposit to a $3,000 ceiling with 30 spins attached. Fund with a card and it drops to 100 percent to $2,000 with 20 spins. Either route opens at $20.Wagering 35 times the deposit and bonus together. Each spin values at $0.40, and anything those spins win stops at $50.Payouts The terms set no ceiling on total withdrawals, only per-method limits, and crypto requests clear on a three-day cycle.The gap Search the pages for a testing lab and nobody is named. -
Ignition
Vermont status Section 2.3 of its terms of use lists the same five states, and Vermont sits outside that list.License Bamboo Media holds the paperwork under the Anjouan Gaming Board at registration 11548.Wagering 30 times deposit plus bonus, with reels counting for everything and video poker, craps, crash titles and jackpots counting for nothing.The rule that voids bonuses While a bonus runs, no single wager may exceed a fifth of what you deposited, and breaking that ceiling once wipes out the bonus and whatever it won.Payouts Bitcoin lands within a day, while Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin SV take roughly an hour.The gap Its own pages advertise three different match figures, so we quote no number. -
Cafe Casino
Vermont status Its Terms of Service name no excluded states whatsoever, which leaves Vermont in by default and commits the operator to nothing.Registrations Two sit behind it, Arbol Media on the Curacao license OGL/2024/670/0711 and Arachis Media under Anjouan at registration 11547.Welcome offer The crypto side triples a deposit to a $2,000 limit and hands over 150 spins, 50 released each day across three days at 20 cents apiece, with spin winnings stopped at $100 daily and $300 across the run. Pay by card and the match halves to 200 percent to $1,500 with 75 spins, at a 5.90 percent cost.The clock Seven days to finish the wagering, and nothing moves inside the first 72 hours.The gap Review sites keep quoting a 40x figure its own terms never state, so we work from the deadline instead.
Disclosure. Reader signups at the offshore casinos we link earn this site a commission. Nothing reaches us from any state-regulated operator named here. Our advertiser disclosure sets out the arrangement in full. Terms move constantly, so whatever the operator posts at the moment you fund an account is what binds you.
From The Offer To The Cashout, With No Regulator In The Middle
Vermont wrote promotional rules once, and they cover three apps. Section 1303 of the wagering chapter makes each licensed sportsbook spell out when a bonus expires, how it plays, what the wagering and redemption take, and how cancellation works, and it forbids the words free or risk-free wherever a player has to expose their own money first. Section 1340 shuts credit cards out of a wagering account entirely. None of that follows a Vermonter to an offshore cashier, so the sums below fall to you.
What a bonus costs to clear
Put $500 in, take $500 on top, and a 35x requirement on the combined figure sends $35,000 through the machines. At 96 cents back per dollar cycled, a rate we use to illustrate rather than to describe any particular game, generating that much action costs roughly $1,400 in expectation. The bonus was worth $500. Read the multiplier before the headline percentage, because that same $500 deposit needs $30,000 of action at Ignition and $35,000 at Slots.lv, while Cafe Casino states no multiplier you could hold either of them against.
The parts that catch first-timers
- Nobody asks for documents until you try to leave with money. Expect a photo ID, the front and back of every card you deposited with, and a utility bill, and expect that paperwork to decide your first withdrawal.
- A deposit has to run through the games once before it comes back out at four of the six casinos we cover, whether or not a bonus was ever involved.
- Cross the per-transaction ceiling at Ignition, Slots.lv or Cafe Casino and the money arrives in slices, one every three days, so a big win turns into a schedule.
- Cards get declined at these cashiers often enough that crypto works as the default rail for United States players rather than the alternative.
Sweepstakes Games And The Vermont Sentence That Allows Them
Sweepstakes platforms run in Vermont without hiding, and the sentence that permits them is easier to find here than in most states. Under section 2143b of Title 13, anyone may organize, execute or enter a contest or game of chance, a sweepstakes included, so long as entry never demands money or anything of value, and the statute adds that postage on a mailed entry does not count as a stake.
One sentence holds up an entire category in this state. The legislature has banned nothing, and no Vermont agency has sent a sweepstakes operator a cease and desist. The exposure sits where the marketing never goes: a state can close the category with no notice, whatever sits in your account is not a debt anyone owes you, and nobody hears an appeal, because the whole legal theory rests on you having entered a promotion rather than a wager. We name no sweepstakes brands and link to none.
Payback, And Why Vermont Sets No Floor On It
No Vermont inspector has ever opened a machine a Vermonter played, which is why this number is worth carrying across the border with you. Payback describes what a machine hands back per dollar cycled through it over millions of spins. Tonight has nothing to do with it, and no way of pressing the button changes it. Whatever the machine keeps is the house edge.
Statutory payback floors, for comparison
Pennsylvania will not let a licensed machine fall below an 85 percent theoretical payout at its lowest available wager. New Jersey draws its line at 83 percent for any slot game taking a wager. Vermont draws no line at all, because a payback minimum rides on a license and Vermont issues none.
Go offshore and no American floor applies, no board gathers the handle, and the operators publish nothing about returns. The New Hampshire cabinets nearest to Vermont run on pari-mutuel pool math, which answers the question a third way again.
How Old You Have To Be, And Where That Changes
Two ages apply inside Vermont, and every border you cross adds another. Whatever minimum an operator prints for itself counts for nothing against the law of the ground you stand on.
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Minimum age by activity
Mobile sports wagering 21. Anyone younger counts as a prohibited sports bettor under the statute.Vermont Lottery 18. Retailers may not sell to anyone below the age of majority.Fantasy sports contests 18, and operators carry the burden of checking it under 31 V.S.A. section 1331.Charitable games of chance Statute sets no age to play, though nobody below the age of majority may run or work a game.Closest floors open at 18 Akwesasne and Saratoga across the New York line, and Casino de Montreal north of the border.Closest floors demanding 21 Revo in West Lebanon, Rivers in Schenectady and MGM Springfield.
New York accounts for most of that inconsistency on its own. Signs at its commercial casinos set 21 for a slot machine or a table, while the video lottery floors attached to racetracks, Saratoga among them, open at 18. Drink service explains the rest, since pouring alcohol on a gaming floor usually drags the drinking age along with it, which is how New Hampshire ends up with a different answer at nearly every property.
What A Slot Win Costs A Vermonter At Tax Time
The federal trigger moved, and most pages covering this subject never caught up. Revised in January 2026, the instructions for Forms W-2G and 5754 tie the reporting threshold to inflation from 2025 forward and put it at $2,000 for anything paid during 2026. The old figure, $1,200, held for decades. A slot win clears that bar on the amount alone, without the 300-times-the-wager condition attached to other wagering transactions.
The Vermont side, which is where it gets specific
Under 32 V.S.A. section 5811(21), Vermont builds its tax on your federal adjusted gross income, then removes a Vermont standard deduction and personal exemptions. Itemized deductions live below adjusted gross income on the federal return, which puts them outside the Vermont calculation entirely. Whatever gambling losses you claim on Schedule A against reported winnings, they shrink nothing on the Vermont side. The state taxes the win in full.
- Win at a machine in New York or Massachusetts and Vermont still counts the money as yours to report at home, while the state where you played may want a nonresident return of its own.
- Without a correct taxpayer identification number, backup withholding takes 24 percent, and it comes off the whole win rather than the slice above the threshold.
- Slot, bingo and keno wins escape the regular 24 percent gambling withholding.
- Wherever federal withholding applies, Vermont withholding applies too, and that reaches the charitable games nonprofits run.
- Nobody issues a W-2G for an offshore win, because no United States operator stands behind it. Missing paperwork erases nothing about the duty to report.
Reporting and deduction rules on the federal side sit in IRS Topic no. 419. Deciding what to do about any of it belongs to somebody licensed to advise you.
Will Vermont Ever License A Slot Floor?
Not soon, and money rather than morality explains why. Licensed buildings came first in every online casino market this country has built, because the people who own them supply the votes a bill needs. No casino owner, no track, no racino and no compacted tribe operates in Vermont, so no in-state business gains anything from a casino bill and nobody works the halls for one. Act 63 went through as a procurement exercise and licensed the narrowest product available.
Everything moving in the 2026 session pushed the opposite direction. H.913 would treat event contracts as illegal gambling and add 50 cents to every wager the licensed books take, and a separate bill going after the lottery itself drew committee time in April. A land-based casino proposal appeared in the same session and died there. A legislature arguing about tightening what it already allows does not authorize reels.
Keeping It The Size You Meant
Vermont operates a genuine self-exclusion program, and the boundary around it matters as much as the program does. The Department of Liquor and Lottery keeps a voluntary exclusion list reaching the state’s authorized sports wagering operators, and you choose the length when you sign up. Signing up takes a photo ID and a selfie, and statute keeps your name off the public record. Fantasy contests sit outside it, so each operator takes that request separately.
Three sportsbook apps honor that list. A New York floor does not, nor does a New Hampshire gaming hall, a Montreal casino or an account opened offshore, and no United States agency will enforce an offshore exclusion for you. Vermont put VTGamblingHelp.org online in July 2024 with a helpline and a live chat behind it.
Gamble responsibly
When slots stop feeling like a night out, help costs nothing, stays confidential and answers at any hour. Call or text 1-800-MY-RESET, or 1-800-522-4700.
Vermont Slots FAQ
How This Page Is Checked
Every statement about Vermont law here traces to a Vermont statute or a Vermont agency, never to another gambling site. The section numbers sit in the text so you can pull them up and disagree with us in about ten minutes.
Operator figures come from each operator’s own terms and help pages, carried with the date we read them. Where a brand’s documents contradict each other, we print the contradiction instead of choosing the version that reads better, which is why Bovada appears above with two incompatible excluded-state lists and Ignition with no match percentage at all. Where nobody publishes something, that absence becomes the finding.
Are there gaming machines in Vermont bars, clubs or at the fairgrounds?
No. The Vermont Lottery sells tickets through roughly 600 agents and self-service ticket units, and a ticket vending unit is not a gaming machine. Section 2136 reaches any device kept in a place of public resort, which covers bars, clubs and lodges. Agricultural fairs get the most generous schedule in the statute, up to 12 consecutive days of games once a year, and the machine ban binds them exactly as it binds everyone else.
Does section 2141 apply if I drive to New York and play there?
Vermont criminal law reaches conduct in Vermont. Playing a licensed machine in New York, Massachusetts or Quebec is lawful where you do it, and Vermont does not prosecute residents for it. The income follows you home for tax purposes, which is the part that actually touches you.
Can a Vermont bar or a private host run a poker night?
A qualifying nonprofit can, inside the casino-event limits above. A private host charging a rake cannot, and the Essex Junction case in May 2026 shows how that ends. Investigators seized the tables, and the homeowner went to a restorative justice program rather than to court, which tells you how Vermont tends to handle it.
Did Vermont ever have machines at a racetrack?
Vermont had a track and never a slot floor. Green Mountain Race Track opened in Pownal in 1963 with thoroughbreds and harness racing, switched to greyhounds in the mid-1970s, and closed in 1992; Vermont banned greyhound racing outright in 1995. Section 2153 now bars anyone from holding, conducting, operating or simulcasting a pari-mutuel race for public exhibition, so the racino path that gave Delaware and West Virginia their online markets does not exist here even in theory.
Can I use my Vermont sportsbook account to play slots when I travel?
Your Vermont account shows no casino tab, because the operator holds no Vermont casino authorization to display one. The same brands do run licensed casino apps in seven other states, and each runs as a separate state-licensed product with its own registration and its own location check at the moment of the wager. Crossing a state line does not convert a Vermont account into a Michigan one.
What do I need to reach the Montreal floor?
A passport or another accepted crossing document, and an age of 18. Loto-Quebec admits guests 18 and over to the casino and its restaurants, the floor holds more than 3,000 machines and 84 gaming tables, and Quebec runs its own problem gambling helpline separate from Vermont’s. Burlington sits roughly 90 minutes from the border, which makes it a day trip for the northern half of the state and a poor plan for the southern half.
Fact Checked
Vermont gambling provisions verified against 13 V.S.A. chapter 51, sections 2135 to 2143b and 2153. Sports wagering, fantasy contests, ages, bonus disclosure and self-exclusion verified against 31 V.S.A. chapter 25, sections 1301, 1302, 1303, 1306, 1331 and 1340. Lottery age verified against 31 V.S.A. section 659, and tribal recognition against 1 V.S.A. chapter 23. Charitable gaming limits verified against the Office of the Attorney General’s gambling guidance. Enforcement example verified against the Department of Liquor and Lottery press release of May 20, 2026. Tax figures verified against the IRS Instructions for Forms W-2G and 5754 (rev. 01/2026), IRS Topic no. 419, and 32 V.S.A. section 5811(21) as summarized by the Vermont Department of Taxes. Slot payback minimums verified against 58 Pa. Code section 461a.7 and N.J.A.C. 13:69E-1.28A. Venue ages and machine counts verified against each property’s own published materials, and New York age rules against the state’s posted casino signage requirements. Operator terms read August 3, 2026. Page facts checked August 24, 2026.
