RE:RE:RE:USA Lotto Taxes on 1.6 Billion winning ticket.. Wow I think you read it wrong. The gov't takes the 1.1 billion and leaves the winner with 500 million...
That means they take 68.75% of your winnings. In my opinion thats just criminal... it's a lottery... everyone buys tickets and puts in their own money to increase the jackpot week after week. The money that people are buying their tickets with was already taxed once when they got their paycheque... then again they paid tax when they bought the ticket and then someone wins and again it gets taxed... in addition to the lottery companies all having to pay enormous fees to the government to support the costs of regulation for their business.. So when some lucky common person wins the jackpot and the gov't says " Thank you very much, we will take 2/3 of your money just because we say so" I think that is wrong.... and to your point... sure there are much larger jackpots in the US... but the odds of winning are also astronomically lower because there are 10X as many people trying to win.
Anyways the whole point was that it's crazy that they tax the sh!t out of lottery winnings in the US... I just think that some things should be tax free....