Get one of these:
You'll be broke soon enough.
Posted on 01/12/2023 6:40:41 AM PST by EBH
Some Twitter users calculated what the value of the Mega Millions jackpot would be after tax — and the results are disappointing.
The Mega Millions grand prize shot up to $1.35 billion after Tuesday’s night’s drawing passed with no official winner.
The prize is the second largest in history, but a number of investing and finance gurus on Twitter estimated that the eventual winner would be taking home far less than $1 billion when all is said and done.
One thing that multiple Twitter users agreed on was that the IRS would win out no matter what.
"The only guaranteed winner in tonight's $1.1 billion Mega Millions drawing is the IRS," Grit Capital CEO Genevieve Roch-Decter tweeted on Monday. "They'll collect at least $200 million immediately if the winner selects the $568m immediate cash payout."
Business author Jared Dillian did an in-depth estimate of the full lottery earnings. "The Mega Millions jackpot is $1.1B. The cash value is $568.7mm. Assuming a 45% tax rate, that leaves you with about $313mm. If you took the cash option and put it in T-bills yielding 4.5%, you would make about $14 million a year, or $38,500/day. Think you could live on that?"
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Who the hell would be dissatisfied with $313 million?
I’m not against the lottery.
But let’s call it what it is. It’s a poor-tax. Poor people buy hundreds of millions of dollars of lottery tickets each drawing. The IRS then collects every time there’s a winner.
People who play the lottery are getting voluntarily taxed and they don’t even realize it.
[[ or $38,500/day. Think you could live on that?”]]
That’s a new electric vehicle purchase per day- hooray! J/k no way I’d spend it on crap like that
Cigarettes are a poor tax as well.
I hate going into the store and there are these people with a big ol envelope with hundreds of tix. The scratch turn in more rinse repeat. And it's always people who could use that money for....I don't know food.
Anyhow. I buy about 10 tix a year. If I am at the store and I have a couple of dollars of loose change laying around I will buy a ticket. That's it.
And there is a 50% tax before it even gets to the draw.
The states get 50% of the money spent on tickets and then the winners get taxed on top of that. Somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of all lottery money ends up with government at one level or another.
Get one of these:
You'll be broke soon enough.
I might be able to squeak by. :>))
Dr. Phil had a show about gambling addiction recently. For the last 2 minutes of the show an investment expert said that the best way for the winner to collect was in annual installments. You pay less taxes, and it forces you to be more disciplined in what you do with it, and not blow it all in a short period of time.
I don’t buy lottery tickets for two reasons, the odds are azillion to one and I don’t want to give my money to the government, they have enough.
People would be better investing their lottery money over a 30 year period. Even at nominal rates of return and say $25/week they’d be surprised what they would “win” after 30 years.
Good idea, except for the possibility the government decides to change the rules in the future.
That is, until you realized not only were taxes taken out, but also you don't get the full winnings if you take the immediate cash prize. In other words, the time value of money still made not buying a lottery ticket worth the reward even that one time in my lifetime it was high enough to seem like it made sense.
Yep. Another reason I don’t “play” the lottery.
Walter Williams said, “If 10% is good enough for the Baptist Church, it ought be good enough for the Government.”
But it is a voluntary tax! Too bad all government revenue can’t be raised that way.
We have had national lotteries for close to 40 years, and most people - including journalists - still have no idea how to calculate the take home pay...
Headline Number - $1.3 billion
Cash Option - $707.9 million
Maximum Income Tax - 37% (starts at $578,000)
Take Home Pay - 707,900,000 X 0.63 = $446 million
If you have ZERO other income in 2023, you will take home an extra $175,000.
When .gov decides to raise the real tax you can bet the fact that peeps have money to throw at the lottery comes into play. Hard ta plead poverty while buying lottery tix and smokes at Patel's Mini-mart. d;^)
True, the govt. just might decide to keep it….
Life’s full of gambles, ain’t it?
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