The Powerball jackpot has been rising for nearly a week now, setting off a nationwide frenzy of ticket purchases. Its odds of winning the jackpot are one in 292.2 million, but that hasn’t stopped people from buying tickets. Seymour Jordan of Manassas, Virginia, picked up his tickets at a lottery machine and waited to see if he was the winner.
If you win the lottery, you should understand that you will owe taxes on your winnings. Depending on where you purchased your ticket, you’ll owe the IRS about $101.7 million, and the rest will go into the federal coffers. Additionally, you may have to pay state taxes if you live in a jurisdiction where you bought your ticket. While some jurisdictions don’t tax lottery winnings at all, others impose a top rate of over 10%.
The jackpot for Saturday’s Powerball drawing has soared to $1.9 billion. It’s the second billion-dollar jackpot of the decade and the fifth time since 2016 that the jackpot has topped the ten-digit mark. While these jackpots are still very rare, the odds of winning a lottery jackpot are longer than they have ever been.
As the Powerball jackpot rises, lottery organizers need to decide if they’re going to make winning the jackpot harder. In order to increase the jackpot, lottery organizers would have to increase ticket prices, make it easier to buy tickets, and expand the game to more states. The Powerball lottery, for example, only exists in five U.S. states, with a combined population of 13.5 million people. The MUSL, however, has changed its format to make it harder to win the jackpot, but made it easier to win smaller prizes.