Proposed Bill: Donate Percentage of Lottery Winnings, Stay Anonymous

It is the biggest prize in Powerball history: $1.4 billion.

“I put (a notice) in the door; no one’s claimed it”, said store owner Michael Klinger late Monday afternoon. The current Powerball Lottery jackpot sits at an astonishing CDN$1.98 billion and continues to grow. Barring taxes, he says winners won’t likely have to make any financial decisions immediately. Those players matched four of the five white balls, plus the Powerball, and bought their tickets with the power play option. The winning ticket was sold in north-central Kansas.

Linn County Sheriff Bruce Riley said he doesn’t usually play the Lottery, but he’s going to buy a ticket before Wednesday. “But this week, we’ve had a lot of younger people coming in and buying them”. The annuity would pay out the winnings over a 30-year period, which would keep some winners from blowing through the cash in a few years, says Andrew Stoltmann, a Chicago-based investment fraud lawyer who has represented lottery winners who sued their advisers.

While people in Canada can use third-party concierge sites to buy the tickets, what the resellers are doing is actually illegal in Washington State and federally. It’s not like I’m hoping to win or that I need to win.

“I would invest most of it and donate money to my favorite things, Linn-Benton Community College, SafeHaven and the Cheadle Lake Foundation”, Garrett said.

For Doug LaBeff he celebrated his birthday by treating himself and his family to Powerball tickets. The “cash value” Wednesday night would be around $868 million in a lump sum: That amount drops to $604.5 million after you deduct the 25 percent federal tax. If lottery profits are more than expected, the money goes into a special fund in case profits come up short in future years. One of the most comprehensive studies of lottery winners http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1324845 shows that winning jackpots of all sizes evaporate fast.

The lottery jackpot has now reached more than $1 billion and everyone seems to be getting in on the action. The money that returns to IN from Powerball goes to the same pot as the rest of the State Lottery Commission’s games.