2A
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NEWS^e C^aclotte $o«2
Thursday, April 6, 2006
You scratch, state wins
Hype meets
hope with
N.C. lottery
Continued from page 1A
I know me and my family
need it,” he said.
Odds are that Smith won’t
win the money by playing
North Carolina’s scratch-off
games. Until May when N.C.
joins the Powerball franchise,
the top payout is $100,000
from the Carolina Cash
game. Those tickets are $5
and the odds of winnir^ are 1
in 3.75.
Durir^ the first five days of
lottery sales, the state made
$24 million, about $1 million
short of the goal. But North
Carolina Education Lottery
chairman Charles Sanders
told the Associated Press that
ticket sales went beyond their
expectations and that the lot
tery started six days ahead of
schedule.
HowevCT, laimching the lot
tery hasn't stopped players
from traveling across the bor
der to South Carolina.
At the Lottery Supercenter
on Carowinds Boulevard, 22
of 24 cars in the parking lot
had Noiih Carolina license
plates.
Lairra Collins, a South
Carolina Education Lottery
spokeswoman, said 12 per
cent of the state’s lottery play
ers come from North
Carolina. South Carolina sold
nearly $1 billion in lottery
tickets last year. ‘We’re going
to continue to focus on om*
strong business plan. The
odds are better in this state,”
Collins said.
The odds of winnir^ South
Carolina’s most popular
game, Powerball is 1 in 1.5
nulhon.
Playing Palmetto Cash 5,
which pa}^ nearly $500,000
to the winner, are little better.
Odds of winning the top prize
are 1 in 500,000.
Concord resident Raymond
Pryor crossed the border and
won $10,000 in South
Carolina’s lottery although
after taxes he pocketed
$6,800. Last week when he
played the N.C. lottery he
won $3 after spending $40.
‘Teople are going to come to
South Carolina because you
get two chances to win,” he
said.
Plus, Pryor added, North
Carolina doesn’t have the
Pick 4 and Pick 5 games that
South Carolina offers.
One thing people may not
consider when winning
money is the fact that the tax
man wfil be coming to collect
as well.
Accordir^ to irs.gov, if you
spend more than $600 or
more in gambling winnir^
from a lottery and the win
nings are 300 times the
amoimt of the w^er, the
wager must be subtracted
from the total winnings to
determine if withholding and
reporting are required. The
wago* must be subtracted at
the time of first payment.
John Hood, president of the
conservative Raleigh-based
John Locke Foimdation said
“government lotteri^ are not
an alternative to taxes. They
are taxes. What’s actually
going on is that the state is
creating a legal gambling
monopoly a government-run
lottery and then collecting a
large chunk of the resulting
proceeds as a tax. You can
consider it, ^ a gross-rec^pts
tax on the lottery ‘enterpise,’
in which case the tax rate in
the average state is about 31
percent. Or you can even
view it as an excise tax on the
sale of every lottery ticket, in
which the implicit tax rate is
about 45 percent.”
According to the Tax
Foundation, a Washington,
D.C., think tank promoting
low taxes and a simplified tax
system, in fiscal year 2003,
state governments kept 31
cents of every dollar spent on
lottery tickets.
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