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Comment by mmanfrin | Hacker News Reader

Question: With a jackpot of $800mil and the chances of winning 1 in ~300mil, could you not buy 300mil tickets? (Excepting, of course, the risk that someone else wins and the cost of taxes).

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It was attempted before:

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/25/us/group-invests-5-million...

Each ticket costs $2.

Splitting the pot and paying taxes on the lump sum or taxes + time on the annuity means that you likely take a net loss buying all the possible numbers.

You could. Lamentably I don't have 300 million lying around.

I think there is a limit on # tickets purchased.

When there are cracks in the lottery games there are people who do find ways to exploit them.

The cash payout is ~$500 million, and after taxes you may end up with $309 million.

So, yeah, probably not a winning strategy.

Well, it sounds like you'd be at least $9 million richer than you were before. And gambling losses are tax deductable, up to the amount of your winnings, so if I understand tax deductions correctly wouldn't you be taxed only on about $200 million of the cash payout?

https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc419.html https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tools/tax-tips/Taxes-101/Can...

If you operated it as a business the lottery tickets are tax-deductible, so no taxes.

There's also approximately a 90% chance that you'll have to split the prize. (estimates are that over 400 million tickets will be sold)

also, tickets are $2.

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