Gambling taxes bear several similarities to two other common excise taxes – those on tobacco and alcohol. All three of these forms of excise taxation have been used through much of modern history to raise revenue for governments at all levels. Besides their pragmatic value as sources of public revenue, all of these taxes at some time have been justified as ‘sumptuary’ taxes, designed in part for the same reason as the sumptuary laws of ancient Greece, to discourage forms of consumption that are not favoured by public opinion. To some extent, the structures of the excise taxes applying to gambling are comparable to those used for tobacco and alcohol taxation.