Small Winnings Tax QuestionPrevious TopicNext Topic

You are truly blessed and highly favored. Did you know that in your state of VT the lottery retailer are required to pay up to $100 on the scratch off tickets but may pay up to $499? And they are reqired to pay up to $499 on the other lottery tickets as long as they were sold by a VT lottery agent? 

Once again I will say when you cash in your tickets I consider you blessed and highly favored because at least you know you will be leaving with cash in hand/pocket/shoe, whereas here in TX, when I cash in my tickets I may be leaving with a check or money order if the retailer decides not to fork over the cash. Not that I would complain too much about the check or money order. It would mean that I now have to make that run to the bank. The only plus of that situation is that the retailer can't charge me for the money order.

Kentucky has "cash agents" and when I had three $400 winning tickets, they cashed each ticket as a separate bet and paid me $1200. I was wondering about taxes on pick-3 straight winners because it pays $600 in Kentucky but the clerk said since the actually win is $599 ($600 minus the $1 bet), there is no tax forms to fill out.

When I lived in Ohio I cashed 10 pick-3 straight winners without any problems but I believe trying to cash 100 tickets to avoid paying taxes would be very difficult in any state. The safe thing  to do would be to call the state lottery and they would give the options.

Some stores won't even offer a money order and tell the player to go somewhere else to cash.

How easy it is to cash winning tickets under $600 should be part of state lottery report cards. When that statistic class rated all state lotteries, they put a high priority on disclosing the cash value on jackpot games but nothing about the difficulty players have in some states of trying to cash a even a $200 winning ticket.

Wow, you too are blessed because you have the ability to cash in your $600 tickets without having to trudge to the local lottery office. Oh if only it were true for us. If that ticket registers $600 or more or my tickets add up to more than $600 it's to the local lottery commission office or to more than one retailer to cash in my tickets.  I don't know why they won't give us that extra dollar? Can you believe the ticket scanners that are set up in the store has three tunes for the tickets?

The scanner plays a tune for losing tickets.

It plays another tune for wins up to $599.

And another tune for all wins over $599.

You can hear the tunes played at the TX lottery website. Who'd of thought? Go figure.

Wishing will not make it so:

How will you center your thoughts and ways of thinking? How will you deal with and control your feelings? How will you determine your desired result from your walk thru life? What procedure will you utilize in your decision making? What is keeping you back? You have a choice between blessing and a curse! Profit or loss! What choice will you make?

If in Texas or any other state a store will sell you a ticket but not cash the same ticket if it's a winner..I"D MOVE!!..It makes no sense at all..Kinda like going to a race track buy a ticket winning and they won't cash the ticket..duuuuuuh

Even the $2 win or $9 win?

Since a free ticket is a win, is that $1 to be reported?

The problem with the cash 4 game is a win is $5000.  After taxes is $3500.

1:10,000 odds for $3500.

They withhold $1500 and give a W2, so it would be like a bonus on a job.

"Even the $2 win or $9 win?"

Why are so many people confused by the extremely simple concept of "taxable income"? If you worked an extra hour this week and were paid with a check for oyur regualr salary but were paid $9 in cash for the extra hour, would you be confused about whether or not it was income?

"Since a free ticket is a win, is that $1 to be reported?"

You clearly recognize that it's worth a dollar. Te only real question would be if you report it and then take the $1 deduction for buying the ticket that won it, or just ignore both of them when doing your taxes.

Save your losing tickets. You can write off the losses against your winnings. Confirm with your accountant or tax attorney but my state office told me that you have to report all winnings and can write off losses against them if they're in the same year.

Save all my losing tickets? Where can I stack all the boxes and crates? Dang it, I knew I should have gotten a doublewide! 

I'm glad you wrote "hypothetically" since this is unlikely to happen all at once.   Where I live there are a lot more than 40 places that sell lottery tickets.  So I would cash each ticket at a different store.  If I didn't want to bother, I'd just cash 1 or 2 each week at the same store for a few months.  Is this dishonest?  Probably. But our tax system isn't fair & honest, so who cares?

Just want to clarify - in my last post I didn't mean that cashing several $500 tickets is dishonest, only sneaking around to hide it from the IRS.    It's probably not even necessary. 

I wouldn't want to call & raise any red flags, although the Lottery usually doesn't give tax advice.  You're right about the 50 individual tickets as far as I know.  I think the OP is mostly an ethics question.   I've seen people cash tickets totalling more than $1,000 at the counter when they have multiple wins.

By the way, congrats on having 50 winning tickets.