Powerball jackpot increases again to $1.5B

In this case, that’s a $930 million cash value.

This is assuming the victor takes the lump-sum, instead of an annual payout for 30 years. For instance, if a Maryland jackpot victor takes the cash, the state will pocket $79.5 million in taxes. Lottery winnings are taxed as ordinary income, and a prize of this size would be subject to the top tax bracket of 39.6 percent.

“It’s uncharted territory for all of us”, Poulin said. He says most of us are doing it all wrong. The game has not had a jackpot prize victor in the last 19 drawings.

Lottery billboards across the country are broken because of Wednesday’s record Powerball jackpot. Ten states, along with Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, don’t charge any state taxes on lottery winnings: California, Delaware, Florida, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming.

Your odds increase with additional tickets, but not by much.

“That’s probably the happiest part of my day is: dreaming what I would do with the money”, said Bymel, of Jupiter, who spent about $200 into lottery tickets for Saturday’s drawing and said he will again for Wednesday’s record drawing.

But to put Maine’s chances in some context, assume a different number combination is purchased on behalf of all 1,328,535 people.

By contrast, you probably didn’t know that a winning ticket was sold for Friday’s $165 million Mega Millions jackpot, whose odds of winning are 1 in 259 million. The state faces a $750 million shortfall in its current budget cycle and an estimated $1.9 billion problem in the next fiscal year.

In Colorado, the typical week for Powerball sales is about $1.3 million.

Businesses get minimum profit on Powerball sales, about 5 cents per ticket. Well, that’s based on the number of people playing, and this weekend’s jackpot demonstrated that big jackpots draw big interest.

In Powerball, about 50 percent of revenues go toward prizes. After federal taxes, your take-home is likely to be $561.7 million, according to CNBC.

With the Powerball jackpot climbing into the billions, Rebecca Hargrove, president and CEO of the Tennessee Lottery, made a decision to tackle the issue of a billboard’s inability to display an amount that great. Before you assume you can use such a service, you need to look at the specific rules of the lottery that you’ve won.

And remember, Powerball is way-bigger than just the New York State Lottery.

If you’re reading this, and now in possession of a lottery ticket you wouldn’t have normally purchased, you are precisely the type of person the Powerball system was hoping to engage.

“We don’t say that “Powerball pays this percentage of our overall costs” because it’s just another game in our portfolio”, Poulin said. The lottery revenue can only be used to help with next year’s budget, according to state regulations.

“The best way to make money on the lottery is not to play”, said Matheson.