One name flashed across Malayalam news channels throughout the latter half of Sunday, September 18 – Anoop. The reason? His ticket number TJ-750605 emerged as the winner of the popular Onam bumper lucky draw contest, which fetches the winner a jackpot amount of Rs 25 crore. However, does the winner get the entire prize money in cash? How much is deducted as tax and goes as commission to the lottery agents? TNM got in touch with an official from the Kerala state Lotteries Department to understand more about the tax cuts that go into the prize money.
At first, there will be a deduction of 10% of the total prize money that goes as commission to the lottery agents, followed by a 30% tax cut from the state government. So in this case, after reducing the agent commission (Rs 2,50,00,000) and income tax (Rs 6,75,00,000), the winner of the Onam bumper lottery will be left with Rs 15,75,00,000. This amount will reach the winner’s bank account. However, it doesn’t end there.
For those with an income above Rs 5 crore, there is a 37% surcharge on the income tax. So in this case, 37% of 6,75,00,000, comes to Rs 2,49,75,000. And lastly, there is also a 4% health and education cess that’s levied on top of the income tax and surcharge (Rs 9,24,75,000), which is Rs 36,99,000.
So basically, the person who wins a prize money of Rs 25 crore, will eventually be deducted a total of Rs 12,11,74,000 and hence be left with a total of Rs 12,88,26,000.
Onam bumper lottery tickets, which offer the highest prize money, witnessed record sales this year, selling over 66.5 lakh tickets, as compared to 54 lakh in 2021. Each ticket costs around Rs 500 and the agent who sells more than 1000 tickets gets a commission of Rs 99.69. The second prize went to ticket number TG-270912, which was sold by an agency in Kottayam.
The Kerala government started the state lotteries programme in 1967. According to the Economic Review 2020 by the Kerala State Planning Board, revenue from lotteries constitutes 81.32% of the state's total non-tax revenue. In 2020, Kerala started selling 90 lakh lottery tickets per day.