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Comment by CatsoCatsoCatso | Hacker News Reader

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/sep/10/do-you-pay-tax-...

    HM Revenue & Customs doesn't regard lottery winnings as income, so all prizes are tax-free – hurray! However, there could be tax implications once you've banked your winnings.

I'm struggling to find other answers, the Daily Mail's 'This is Money' website says the opposite is true and that it's counted as freelancer income.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/experts/article-2551709/I...

    HMRC has produced guidance in the context of freelancers who win prizes and the short version is that they view most prizes as taxable income of the freelancer.

Grey area? An interesting area.

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Re freelancing - the context is that the prize is an industry award; they won it as part of their work and so if they're a sole trader it counts as income in the normal way and would be taxed accordingly.

Gambling income is tax free in the UK as I understand it, you pay tax to take part (the tax at that end is greater unless the company pays out more than it receives!).

Ah excellent, thanks for the clarity regarding the freelancing. Admittedly I skimmed those articles to try and claw the information as fast as I could.

(Having a website which looks like the DailyMail open at work (even during break) isn't the best look!)

http://blog.national-lottery.co.uk/meet-man-pays-money/#.VcC... - A blog by the guy who pays out the money. It's tax free.

For the lottery, yes. I believe because the tickets themselves are taxed you aren't taxed when you win.

I believe the same is true of gambling winnings (The reasoning being that you aren't given tax refunds when you lose, so it's unfair to tax when you win)

Prizes that you haven't payed for entry might be different.

> I believe the same is true of gambling winnings (The reasoning being that you aren't given tax refunds when you lose, so it's unfair to tax when you win)

Which becomes really interesting when you consider professional poker players.

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