Re: How to win the lottery

From: Charlie (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Wed May 10 2000 - 14:10:35 MDT


On Thu, May 11, 2000 at 01:30:08AM +1000, Dwayne wrote:
>
> > The foreign consortium
> > was not operating a business as far as Australia is concerned, just
> > gambling. I believe at the time the U.S. tax code did not require
> > Australians who place bets on U.S. lotteries to pay capital gains
> > taxes to the U.S., but rather to pay them to their home country (at
> > least from what I recall in the Time or Newsweek article). Of course
> > Australia had no capital gains tax on gambling winnings.
>
> This is weird. Is this recent? I know an Australian guy who was in a
> consortium several years ago to do just this

IIRC, in the UK, you do not pay tax on lottery/gambling winnings ...

... because you have already paid income tax/sales tax on the stake you
paid with.

(Think about it. Before everybody places their bets, tax has been
extracted from their pocket. The gambling company itself pays some tax,
too, IIRC. But the winnings aren't taxed. On the other hand, this differs
from some other chunks of the UK tax regime -- for example, I'm informed
by one of my pet real ale brewers that under some circumstances HM Customs
& Excise charge VAT (value added tax) on beer sold in pubs -- for which
excise duty and VAT (on the ingredients) was paid by the brewery.

Tax laws are weird. The only solution is to achieve an agalmic future --
one which is so awesomely pervasively rich that money becomes irrelevant
to most people's lives. (Want a fictional treatment? Go read some Iain
Banks. Now _that_ is extropian ...)



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