The Powerball jackpot has grown to an estimated $1 billion for Wednesday night’s drawing, the third highest in the history of the game. So what would you win if you actually won?
If a sole player picks all five numbers plus the Powerball number drawn, they have the option of taking the $1 billion prize in yearly increments or a $516.8 million one-time lump sum payment.
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WATCH HEREA sole winner in Texas who took the cash option would take home $392,768,000 after paying $124,032,000 in federal taxes -- or 24%. There is no additional state tax on lottery winnings in Texas.
If the player took the annuity, they would receive 30 payments over 29 years with the disbursement increasing at a rate of 5% per year. With a $1 billion prize, the first payment would be about $15 million, of which about $5.5 would go toward taxes. Because Powerball annuity payments increase every year, the final payment would be about $62 million with about $23 million owed in taxes.
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SIGN UP Over the term, the player who took the annuity would receive about $632 million after taxes -- or about $239 million more than the player who took the cash option.
Ticket sales for Powerball are hot. The Texas Lottery said at 6 p.m. that Powerball ticket sales for the preceding hour were $1,763,500 -- or $29,392 per minute. Sales for the entire roll through 6 p.m. were $13,907,184.
Tickets are sold in Texas until 9 p.m. on the day of the drawing, about 1 hour and 15 minutes before the draw takes place.
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The last time someone won the Powerball jackpot was April 19 for a $252.6 million prize. Since then, no one has won the grand prize in the past 35 consecutive drawings.
The game's abysmal odds of 1 in 292.2 million are designed to build big prizes that draw more players. The all-time largest Powerball jackpot was $2.04 billion last November.
Powerball is played in 45 states, as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
