now thats a raffle game.....HELLO!!!! " guarantee a winner of the top prize, worth $1 million annually for 25 consecutive years" now thats a game I wouldn't mind spending a few hundred dollars on.

man o man they more problems with canadian lotteries than the law should allow

All Canadian lottery games have a cash option (in this case, C$17 million.) As Canadians are used to all-cash jackpots, and less familiar with annuity prizes than their US counterparts, I doubt an annuity-only Canadian game would fly. In fact, a Canadian winning an annuity lottery prize offered by a Canadian lottery would have to pay tax(es) on the interest that would be an increasing percentage each year of the "cheque" that they would get in the mail.

Cash Only,

Your statement is not correct. The annuity payments are tax free. The tax arrangements have already been made with the government. The cheque the winner receives, whether weekly, monthly or yearly, is tax free.

Whether or not the interest portion of Canadian lottery annuities is taxable, I doubt Canadians would go for an annuity-only game. They have been brought up by NOTHING but all-cash prizes.

I once remember Saskatchewan charging some kind of tax on lottery tickets in the 1980s, but it was quickly repealed.

What makes it such a good game? The after-tax net on the current MM jackpot will be over $50 million, which could generate an annual after-tax income of more than $1.5 million forever.  As a bonus, MM pays the money in US dollars (though that is a smaller bonus than it used to be).

Is anyone understanding what happened here    Debating cash option and taxes

when the lottery has put the winning numbers up prior to the drawing is sickening

to say the least!!  You all must have bought that sorry excuse that they gave about

the numbers being test numbers.  That doesnt even make sense.  Test numbers for what??

The drawing has already been done and they are still selling tickets.  How many other lotteries

operate like this. 

I have a question,  Is this lottery GTech controlled??

You obviously did not read the entire story. 

=============== 

Prototype Page

"We did a test prototype page for the draw and one of our staff unlocked the page and put it on the website for about nine hours," said Matheson. "It was a human error."

When a computer prompt asked if its user would like to "unlock" the template, the staff member should have hit the "no" option, but mistakenly hit "yes," said Matheson.

He said the numbers were online from about 2:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Saturday but removed that afternoon.

"[The numbers] were just entered to see how much space is required on the page," said Matheson.

=================

If you've ever done website design you know that sometimes what you think something will look like does not look right.  Or maybe you've never done website design...  Anyway, they were testing the process and accidentally made it public.  The numbers they posted were NOT the winning numbers.  Those had not been chosen yet.

Too bad someone didn't check and have the winning numbers......would have made a much better story.

I totally agree...They were NOT the official winning numbers.  Tickets were still being sold...the ILC's central computer system runs literally 24/7 and no draw can ever or will ever take place if the system is up and running.  There are huge security measures that take place before and after the draw to ensure that nothing but random chance alone determines a winner.  So for lottery players to believe that they were the winning numbers and were scratching their heads...remember that was the WCLC, one of the five lottery jurisdictions in Canada who were testing out the layout for the game results.  This game is not run by WCLC.  All five jurisdictions run games for the Interprovincial Lottery Corporation.  ILC runs our national games Lotto 6-49, Super 7, and from time to time nationwide specialty games like Millionaire For Life.  I can assure you from ILC, they would look at WCLC and their postings as a very bad thing. 

For comments earlier on Canadians not knowing how to run thier games, we've had immense security when it comes to draws.  Still a leader today when it comes to draws...all games are run by the government.  There's no private corporations running the games.  All games from our national draws, our provincial games, right down to scratch tickets are tax free.  With the exception to Western Canada, most games are done using Ryo-Catteau ball machines or something close to it.  The only time computers are used would be in a case when you have to guarantee a winning ticket, then a seperate computer system would select the winning entry and then the entry number is looked up in the central computer's data to pull the winning ticket number to go with that entry.

It's unfair to categorically say were bad, because of the two items in the news of late. (lottery retailers and scratch tickets/WCLC posting numbers).  I can assure you that integrity is paramount.  From the draws end of it, it all happens the way it should.