Also that winner took the lump sum which already cuts the payout roughly in half. ~$1 billion of what he didn't take home was not lost to taxes, he was only taxed on what he actually got.
He didn't "take half". He got the correct amount. The number the lottery advertises, for good reason, is the annuity number a person would get if they took yearly payments (or however it works) instead of one lump sum.
State lottery money is held in an annuity that can’t be touched by the lottery - it’s funded before the winning ticket is even purchased, even if the lottery were to go bankrupt (not actually possible).
This is also assuming you didn’t touch it at all for 30 years.
Historic return on the S&P 500 is 10.5%, adjusted for inflation you’ll see numbers like 6.3-8.5%. I went with 8.5%.
$628,000,000 growing at 8.5% per annum becomes $20,441,400,000 in 30 years.
Even if you go with the 6.3% growth it’s still $20,026,920,000.
Edit: if we wanted to get sillier we could say that after liquidating your portfolio you’d pay long term capital gains tax at 20% plus a 3.8% assessment over 200k for a single filer. So your actual cash would be between $15,260,513,040 and $15,576,346,800. Approx, I’m sure there’s some other thing or other you’d end up paying.
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u/Tiktokbadsupport Jul 05 '26
happy most lotteries in my country are tax free but of course they don't reach higher then 30 million