What the calculators compute
- Tax estimates — estimated federal and state tax on a lottery prize, plus estimated take-home amount and effective tax rate.
- Payout comparisons — cash option versus annuity, shown side by side as estimates with no recommendation of one over the other.
- Odds & probability — jackpot odds, odds of any prize, and probability across multiple tickets, derived from each game's official rules.
- Random number generation — quick-pick style combinations for convenience only. Every combination has exactly the same probability; nothing here predicts winners.
How tax estimates work
- Lottery winnings are treated as ordinary income. The calculator subtracts the standard deduction for your filing status (single, married filing jointly, married filing separately, or head of household), then applies that tax year's progressive federal brackets.
- State tax is estimated with a top-marginal-rate planning estimate for the selected state and year — a deliberately conservative planning figure, not a simulation of a full state return.
- States that do not tax lottery winnings (for example California, which exempts California Lottery winnings, and states with no individual income tax) show $0 state tax.
- Estimated federal and state taxes are added for the total estimated liability; subtracting it from the prize gives the estimated take-home amount and effective tax rate.
Federal withholding is kept separate from estimated liability throughout the site. Withholding (24% on gambling winnings over $5,000) is what may be held back when you are paid — it is credited against your final tax bill, not added to it. West Virginia is currently flagged as needing verification because a reported 2026 rate change is not yet confirmed against an authoritative source.
How payout estimates work
The cash option is never invented — you always enter the current cash value yourself, because only the lottery publishing the jackpot knows it. For the annuity, each annual payment is taxed in the year it is received:
- Powerball: 30 graduated payments over 29 years. No verified fixed growth rate is published, so you enter the growth rate — the default is clearly labeled as an assumption.
- Mega Millions: one immediate payment followed by 29 annual payments, each 5% larger than the last, per the official game rules.
The site shows cash and annuity estimates side by side and never says one choice is better than the other.
How odds are calculated
All odds come from the combinatorics of each game's official matrix — for example, Powerball's 5-from-69 plus 1-from-26 and Mega Millions' 5-from-70 plus 1-from-24. Jackpot totals are derived from the centralized game configuration at build time, never hard-coded. Multi-ticket probability uses the standard 1 − (1 − p)^n formula under the documented assumption that each ticket is an independent draw.
How the number generator works
Combinations are drawn with the WebCrypto API (a partial Fisher–Yates shuffle with rejection sampling), falling back to Math.random only if WebCrypto is unavailable. Main numbers are sorted, bonus balls are drawn separately, duplicates are removed by default, and requests are capped at 100 sets. Generated sets are for convenience only — the generator makes no prediction, and no "hot", "cold", or "due" numbers exist. Nothing is stored, tracked, or sent anywhere.
Limitations
- Every figure on this site is an estimate, not tax or financial advice.
- State figures are planning-rate estimates; local and city taxes are not included.
- Your actual tax bill depends on your full return and the laws in effect when you claim.
- Game rules and tax laws change — verify against the official sources below before acting.