My point wasn’t that two was the optimal number, but that two or three tickets from the same person with the same exact winning numbers isn’t likely to do much beyond raise a few eyebrows.
More than that, and I bet they’d start suspecting some sort of nefarious goings-on, and you’d almost certainly be held up in claiming your prize, and be super-newsworthy as well.
One of the important things would be to stay anonymous, so that every grifter, hard-luck third cousin, and everyone with a sob story of some kind doesn’t come to you with their hand out, expecting you to pay for something, because you have so much, and they only need a little.
I wasn’t aware that Ontario lotteries allowed anonymous lottery winners although other places do. The “fake a winner and government keeps the cash” was a normal enough paranoia that it’s featured in Orwell’s 1984.
The main point here is that income is taxed in the locale that it is earned, so being a Canadian does not help. (This makes for interesting work for accountants for pro sports teams or touring musicians) The only change I would recommend is buy your Powerball ticket in a state with the lowest or no income tax. If you pay taxes where you live, usually they deduct any taxes you paid to the state where you earned that income, on the principle that they don’t double-tax; but you in the end paying the greater of both state taxes.
My father for example paid Canadian taxes on his Canadian pension, but subtracted that from his tax payable to the IRS while living in the USA. The treaty allowed for standard deductions - i.e. Canada allows an additional deduction from taxable income for being over 65, and so by treaty the IRS recognizes that deduction…
Most of this stuff is irrelevant when you are talking about millions.
Of course, even with no rigging whatsoever, you’d expect 666 to come up every few years or so. But every time it happens, folks will suspect funny business.
And even if you are in the disciplined 30 percent, much will go wrong. Since no job is perfect, a lot of your children’s job satisfaction comes from knowing their efforts support their family. Now you made their years spent as a provider useless.
Small-stakes wagers can be harmless fun. But big life-changing pots are a mistake. In this way, government lotteries are less moral than old-time illegal numbers games that paid, at most, 600 to one.
That’s because of the type of people who regularly play. It’s a tax on folks who can’t do math or understand odds. Then one of them wins and can’t handle it.
With that said, I know 4 people who won going all the way back to the 80’s. 25 million, 8 million, 1 million, and 350K respectively. Only they guy that won 1 million eventually found himself in financial trouble.
I wonder how these statistics were produced. Did they consider all winners of all amounts, or only winners with amounts between $1m and $500m? Because if they count all winners, then you need to keep in mind that the vast majority of lottery winners get small amounts <$1,000. And then it’s hardly surprising that most of them spend that money really fast. To be honest, I find it difficult to imagine someone going through $500m in less than five years. You’d have to spend more than $270,000 a day on average.
I think the OP is asking by which law would they enforce payment of tax ?
IRS and anti-money laundering authorities do say “where a transaction has been divided into many tractions just for the purpose of trying to hide the transaction, that is not allowed, it will be treated as one transaction, and anyone who spots that should inform us of the transactions.”
HSBC was in trouble in USA for not preventing money laundering and tax evasion ?
Australian banks have been recently too. The lottery people would be under some pressure to not let you get away with such an obvious tax dodge… and then there is question of corruption…how… why …huh… don’t you maximise your return by buying tickets with varying numbers ??
So only this statement, taken literally, is factual:
In the opinion of this poster, receiving a greatly life-changing sudden unearned financial windfall is likely to result in misery through a number of possible mechanisms, including kicking yourself for spending it all, being married for your money, having other rich people shun you, and seeing your previously hardworking children become dissolute. While I laughed about some of these mechanisms when viewing the The Beverly Hillbillies as a child, it isn’t, in my personal opinion, funny in real life.
I don’t think it was about which law would apply - I think it was about how it would actually be enforced as a practical matter. I am supposed to report all my gambling winnings on my tax return - but only certain amounts will be reported on a W2G depending on the type of gambling. For lottery tickets, the amount is more than $600 , and therefore, in my state I must claim any prize of $601 or more at a lottery claim center and provide ID and my social security number. If I win $500, I can claim it at anyplace that sells lottery tickets with only my winning ticket. If I win $500 ten times over the course of a month, and claim my winnings at different times/places, no one will spot it - there will be no record that the same person claimed all ten tickets because there is no record made of who claimed a prize under $601. And even if I claim them all at one place , and the cashier at the liquor store remembers how many winning tickets I cashed and for how much ( which is unlikely) there is no mechanism for the liquor store to issue a W2G.
This was in the 80s or 90s, so she probably didn’t have a cell phone. She likely would have had to go in person. But the phone started ringing when she got home. Someone was bribed.
Well yes, a lottery is essentially a stupidity tax. The dumber you are, the more you pay. I only have to pay $6 a week.
But seriously, your odds of winning go up tremendously when you buy that first ticket. After that, it’s the law of diminishing returns.
I recall an article about lottery winners and their tribulations - not the $50M winner, but people who won things like $1M or $500,000. It’s not enough to retire mid-life to a leisure lifestyle, but it does bring all sorts of behaviour out in other people. One fellow mentioned switching jobs because the guy at the next desk got more and more persistent haranguing him about “You have way too much money, you should help me pay off my mortgage.” They all ran into not just charities harassing them, or distant family, but complete strangers showing up with their sob stories about why these winners should be generous to them.
Funniest story I read - some fellow had a surprise divorce from his wife. Then he found out 2 years later, she’d won the lottery before she moved out and she kept that detail secret, cashed after she moved out, kept her name private. But somehow some investment company got her name and address (her old address from her driver’s license?) and so the ex-husband got a letter offering to to help her invest her winnings. Fun twist - apparently in California any assets that are hidden from the court during a divorce will go to the other spouse 100% instead of being split 50-50.
So number one strategy of winning the lottery is don’t lie to divorce court.
Throughout history, there have been many people who got rich (or were born rich), and decided to test the theory that “I can’t possibly spend it all.”
The overwhelming majority of those folks found out that if you really put your mind to it, it is, in fact, possible to spend it all.
Back in the days when gentlemen always wore a jacket or a coat of some kind in polite society, and only people engaged in heavy manual labor went around in their shirtsleeves, there was a saying – “From shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” The first generation makes the money and gets rich; the second generation of the family may add some to the pile but probably not much; and the third generation blows it all and dies poor.
Accountant: “Sir! Your son lost half a million dollars gambling last year. How long can he keep going on like that?”
Rich Guy: [thinks] “About 115 years…”
Or, it’s for people whose utility function of money is non-linear, i.e. the cost of spending a small amount of money on a lottery ticket is outweighed by the (small) chance of winning a significant amount, even if the expected value of the lottery is negative.
It seems to me the business to buy in advance would be the lottery shop where you buy the tickets. There’s a couple of additional percentage points lying around and it will be useful for the anonymity and/or the tax shenanigans some are implying.
That’s what friends are for! Don’t forget to tell them that you are rich and they will be glad to help.
The utility function has to be more than non-linear. It needs to be convex at least over some region so that lotteries are valued above their expected value. A convex utility means that that person is risk-seeking rather than risk-averse.
The arithmetic expectancy value becomes less significant if one takes the view that $20 million and $200 million are effectively the same: “enough money to live a comfortable leisure lifestyle for life”. The catch is that it works that way (for either amount) if you handle and invest the money sensibly instead of blowing it.
Then there are people like my gf’s aunt, who passed away last month. Twenty some years ago she won a lottery drawing for ~$1.25 million dollars. She never touched the winnings. She complained about taxation of her prize and would constantly talk about how her investments were not doing as well as she would like.
My gf is co-executrix and has cried not only for the loss of her beloved aunt, but also over the fact that the woman could have enjoyed that money. Instead she lived frugally. When her refrigerator died, she refused to buy a new one (since they are expensive and not as well made as the old ones), instead finding a used one through her church.
Me? I’m 63 and surprised I’ve made it to this age. If I won millions I’d try as hard as I could to spend the money before my death, ideally going broke thirty minutes before my massive stroke/coronary/spontaneous human combustion.