How Much Tax You’ll Pay If You Win The Powerball

• Nobody won Monday’s Powerball drawing, meaning the jackpot is now worth $750 million. But if you win, how much of that will you actually get to take home?
• The short answer: just a fraction of it. First of all, if you took the lump sum instead of annual payments – which nearly every winner does – you’d end up with $378.8 million, says John Chichester Jr., CEO of Chichester Financial Group. Then there’s a mandatory 24 percent federal withholding tax, lowering your winnings to about $90.9 million, he says. But that’s not all. “That 24 percent comes off the top, but you’re still responsible for another 13 percent at some point,” Chichester says.
• The good news is you probably won’t have to deal with paying taxes on the Powerball jackpot. The odds of winning it are about one in 292 million.