How To Claim Winning Lottery Ticket

Here are some things to do and not do when hitting the big lottery jackpot prize.

Dumb idea for a how to story you're thinking, no doubt. How to claim a winning lottery ticket. How do you claim a winning lottery ticket? I bet you don't have a clue.

Hey, you never know. You may have a winning ticket one day and this story could save you tens of millions of dollars. Let's face it. Someone has to win and it could be you.

I wrote this story because most people don't know the first thing to do when winning a huge amount of money. You just go down to your corner store, sign the back of the ticket, and have them mail it into the lottery commission. Right? Isn't that what you'd do?

Or are you the type who'd take a limousine to the lottery headquarters. Either way, both ways are wrong. There are some things that you need to do first before picking up your money.

Now I'm not writing about a hundred dollar scratch ticket winner. I'm writing about claiming the big jackpot prize 25, 50, 100 million dollars or more. If you won that kind of money, what would you do? Would you trust your winning ticket, albeit signed winning ticket, to a lottery agent? Able to bleach off your signature and write in their own name, I wouldn't.

Did you read about that guy or gal from New York who won $162 million dollars in the Mega Millions Lottery Game? What would you do had you won that prize? Wow. I can't imagine winning that amount of money.

Yeah, I know, you'd buy a big house, a few houses, and pay cash for them, and furnish them with the best new furniture, antiques, and artwork. Then, you'd buy new cars for everyone in your family, including a couple of special vehicles for yourself and your sweetie. Then, the real fun starts, a shopping spree where you'd buy watches, jewelry, and clothes. Finally, you'd take that extended cruise you always wanted to take and travel to see all those faraway places you've only read about and always wanted to see.

Forget about work. You wouldn't even bother to take the time to give them a call to tell them that you quit. They can take your job and shove it and keep your last lousy paycheck. You don't need that pittance anymore. You're finally free of that drudgery.

Lastly, you'd make sure you and your kids were financial secure by making some long-term investments, stocks, bonds, money markets, annuities, treasury notes, and, of course, more lottery tickets, not to mention your side trip to the casino. Hey, why not? This may be your lucky time, after all. You may as well go with the flow. You could be on a lucky streak.

You'd pay off everyone's school loans and unsecured credit card debt. Only, slow down. Let's back up a minute. How do you claim the ticket?

Would you take the lump sum cash buyout or would you take the 25 year payoff receiving a payment every year. Think about it. Which would you do? Tick tock. One time sum or payments.

I know, because it's an anuity, if you take the lump sum they reduce it by nearly 40%. If you take the 25 payments, you'd received all of your money without the 40% reduction. Which one is the right decision for you?

Let me give you a hint. You want to take the lump sum payment. You don't want those bastards holding onto your money any longer than they already have. You want it all and you want it now.

But wait. It's the end of the year. You don't want to claim your prize until after the start of the new year and a new tax year. Make sense?

Now, about the one time, lump sum payment. You don't want to claim the ticket in your name. Yes, I understand you thought you'd claim the ticket in your mother's name because she's over sixty-five and blind and by claiming it in her name, you'd get all those extra exceptions at tax time. Now, we're thinking creatively, but that's not nearly good enough.

If you just walked down there and claimed the ticket in your name, even in your Mom's name, and asked for the cash buyout option, after federal and state taxes, you'd be left with around $50 million of the $162 million dollar jackpot. Nope, I'm not kidding. Isn't that criminal? Why settle for less when, with a bit of planning and sound financial advice, you could have a lot more, maybe as much as double that amount.

Fifty million dollars is a lot of money, but why settle for fifty million, when you could have twice that amount, one hundred million? Whether you take the fifty million or roll it into one hundred million, either way, it's still a lot of money, more money than you can spend in a lifetime.

Yet, it should be a crime that these states get away with falsely advertising their jackpots, even though they know that you won't get a fraction of what they advertise. If a business falsely advertised like that, in the way that the state lottery commissions do, they'd be shut down by the state. Rules are rules, what rules are made for private industry should be the same for the government, but they aren't.

So, what do you do? How do you claim your ticket without giving so much away in taxes to the federal and state governments? First things first.

Make sure you sign the back of your ticket. Don't tell anyone you won the lottery and take your ticket to the bank and lock it away in a safety deposit box. If you plan on staying with your spouse, tell him or her that you won, no one else. Otherwise, go find a good divorce attorney and confide in him.

Trust me, you'll have plenty of time to tell people later, after you come down from the ceiling. And you don't want the newspapers or the lottery commission taking your damn photo. If your photo is published with your name, along with the city where you live, with a story that you won the big lottery jackpot prize, you'll not only be hearing from relatives you never heard of but also you'll be having to defend yourself against frivolous lawsuits.

Now, you want to find a financial adviser, one who is also a tax attorney. He'll draw up the papers for you to establish a corporation. A corporation? Why must you claim your prize in the name of a corporation?

You don't want to own and run a business. You don't have the time, the interest, and the experience to run your own company. You just want to have fun. Now that you have all this money, you want to be free of the business world and don't want to be tied down by the responsibility of a corporation of all things.

To receive as much of the jackpot prize as you can, in the name of the corporation is how you must claim the lottery ticket. Why? The tax rate on that amount of money is at least and not less than 50% for individuals, more with the amount of money you won, and only 25% and probably much less than that for corporations.

With corporations and corporate taxes, there are many legal deductions you can claim to reduce that tax down to a mere 10% or even lower. With a bit of creativity and a creative accountant, you could even show a loss, depending on the company you establish, such as a pharmaceutical research company or an oil and mineral mining company, even a green research company that helps save the environment. Conceivably, you could end up collecting all your lottery money and pay no taxes at all with the huge tax write-offs and subsequent tax refund you'd receive.

Well, for those who have hit the big one, I hope you will read this story and remember me with a finder's fee of say 10% of every tax dollar saved.