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cashed where the ticket was purchased. Retailers may redeem tickets over that amount but $600 and up must be redeemed in person at fc lottery regional office (Richmond, Abingdon, Farmville, Hampton, Harrisonburg, Fairfax or Roanoke). If unclaimed at the end of 180 days, prizes revert to Virginia’s Literary Fund.
The overall odds at winning something are better than one in 8.5 but the odds for winning the $5,000 jackpot are one in 60,000. Overall odds will vary with different games and will increase for next year’s computerized games in which gamblers will select their own numbers for daily, semi-weekly or weekly number drawings.
The top prize in the next round of instant-winner will be $10,000; jackpots in the computerized number games may be significantly higher.
Why is the conservative Commonwealth sponsoring a gambling game? The state got into the lottery business to make money. From each dollar spent for a ticket, 50 cents goes to prizes, five cents to the retailers in sales commission, 10 cents to the Lottery Department for administrative costs and 35 cents to the state treasury. Lottery officials expect this 35 percent share to be about $87 million in the first year.
For another, less direct revenue source winnings are also taxed. The Lottery Department withholds state and federal taxes on prizes of more than $5,000, and it notifies state and federal tax departments of winnings over $600. While the state does not tax prizes less than $600, the Internal Revenue Service expects to see even those more modest earnings declared.
Lotteries were once used to help finance major undertakings including the construction of Harvard and Princeton universities. But corruption led to their demise and this form of state-sponsored gambling ended until 1964. Now enjoying a revival, U.S. lotteries posted combined sales of more than $13 billion in 1987. That is the equivalent of every man, woman and child buying 54 $1 tickets last year.
And that figure will probably grow, with four more states —r Indiana, Idaho, Minnesota, and Kentucky — holding lottery referendums this November.
Although lottery opponents in Virginia and elsewhere maintain that the poor are the major buyers of tickets, a recent national marketing study conducted by 7-Eleven showed that the convenience store’s average lottery customer is 39, married and had an income of $30,600. With its sister company High’s Dairy Stores, 7-Eleven is the nation’s largest lottery retailer.
94.2%