In a big win for Seattle restaurant operators, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a bill that repeals the city’s amusement license fee. The annual license fee for an amusement device was anywhere from $50 to $1,500 per device per year depending on the cost to play. The fee is also repealed for dart boards, billiards and jukeboxes.
This fee applied to both small bars and restaurants with only one machine and larger arcades with hundreds of devices. While it was meant to cover the cost of sales tax for the machines, the fee often made it impossible to turn a profit on amusement devices and brought in little money to the city. With the removal of this fee, many businesses will be able to save hundreds to thousands of dollars per year.