After consecutive months of no jackpot winner, two winning grand prize tickets have been announced on the Wednesday Powerball draw, taking home the seventh-largest amount in Powerball's history, a $632.6 million prize.
One person from California and another from Wisconsin won the Jan. 5 jackpot prize by matching the five white balls and a red ball from the draw. The Wednesday winning numbers were 06, 14, 25, 33 and 46. Powerball drawn was 17 with a Power Play of 2x.
The winners will not end up with the advertised amount. They can either take the windfall as an annuity of 30 payments over 29 years or as an immediate, reduced lump sum. And taxes will have a sizable take out of the winnings.
For this $632.6 million jackpot, each ticket is worth an annuitized $316.3 million or $225.1 million cash. A 24% federal income tax withholding for the cash option would reduce the amount by $54 million to $171.1 million.
Fortunately, California does not tax lottery wins; however, if the person lives in a different state, that may not be the case. Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, the state will withhold 7.65%, which translates into another $17.2 million being a bit off the top prize, leaving that winner with $153.9 million. Winners can expect to owe more at tax time, given the top federal rate of 37%.
According to the Multi-State Lottery Association, one of two jackpot Powerball tickets was sold at a 7-Eleven in Sacramento. "The jackpot gets split, this morning somebody is sitting on a piece of paper in California worth $315 million," said Carolyn Becker, a spokesperson for the California State Lottery.
Powerball has the world record for the largest lottery jackpot. The record $1.586 billion cash was shared in 2016 by winners from California, Florida, and Tennessee. The last person to win the Powerball jackpot was also from California.
"The other thing that makes this win so exciting for California is this is the second Powerball jackpot in a row that hit in California, so the last time someone won the Powerball jackpot was back in October, just over three months ago, a single winning ticket on the central coast in California hit the jackpot," Becker shared about a Morro Bay grocery store that sold the winning ticket of $699.8 million.
Based on Powerball's statistics, the overall odds of winning a prize are 1 to 24.9, while winning the jackpot is 1 in 292.2 million. Powerball's jackpot has reset to $20 million for its next drawing, set for Saturday night.
Drawings are held on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays at 10:59 pm ET. Meanwhile the sales cut-off times vary depending on the selling jurisdiction, mostly by one to two hours before the drawing schedule.
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