WASHINGTON – The federal government has first claim on roughly $120 million of Monday’s Powerball jackpot before a winner sees a dollar. That is the effective portion owed at the 37 percent top marginal rate on the $325.1 million cash option: the lump sum that replaces receiving the advertised $748 million in annual payments over 29 years. State taxes apply after that. Legal and financial fees follow. Nobody who bought a ticket at a gas station counter this week was thinking about any of it.
Saturday’s drawing produced no jackpot winner. The Multi-State Lottery Association set Monday’s estimated jackpot at $748 million, with a cash value of $325.1 million, for a drawing scheduled at 10:59 p.m. Eastern at the Florida Lottery draw studio in Tallahassee. The prize is the largest active lottery jackpot in the country, arriving less than a week after a Florida ticket claimed an $803 million Mega Millions prize that has still not been publicly claimed.
The federal math follows a two-step sequence. Powerball withholds 24 percent at the point of payment on prizes exceeding $5,000, reducing the $325.1 million cash option to roughly $247 million before a winner has signed anything. The gap between that withholding rate and the top marginal rate of 37 percent comes due when the winner files their federal return. After that reckoning, approximately $204.8 million survives federal taxation. State taxes apply on top: Texas, Florida, and California impose none. New York’s rate reaches 10.9 percent. A winner in New York starts with $325.1 million and ends with roughly $170 million before financial and legal counsel, which advisers in the sudden-wealth field recommend retaining before claiming anything at all, per IRS guidance on gambling income and losses.
The odds of reaching that accounting problem are exactly 1 in 292,201,338. That figure applies to each individual ticket regardless of how long the jackpot has run without a winner. Powerball is sold in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands at $2 per play. The jackpot grows with each drawing that produces no winner because a portion of every ticket sale across all participating jurisdictions accumulates into the prize fund. Saturday’s drawing confirmed that the $748 million estimate for Monday reflects multiple consecutive no-winner draws.
The timing carries its own context. The Powerball jackpot stood at $663 million entering Wednesday’s drawing and grew after no winner emerged then either. Three days later, a single ticket sold at a Wawa convenience store in Bradenton, Florida matched all six numbers in a separate Mega Millions drawing and claimed the $803 million prize, the largest lottery jackpot of 2026 before taxes. That game and Powerball are independent lotteries with separate odds and prize pools. The proximity of two jackpots above $700 million in the same week reflects coincidence in the calendar, not any shared mechanism.
At $748 million, Monday’s drawing approaches the territory of the largest Powerball jackpots on record. The game’s all-time high is $2.04 billion, set in California in November 2022 and still the largest lottery prize ever paid in the United States. The most recent Powerball jackpot to approach this range was the $1.817 billion prize won by an Arkansas ticket on Christmas Eve 2025, which ended a run of 47 consecutive drawings without a winner. Monday’s jackpot represents a substantial prize by any historical measure, though it remains well below those heights.
If a ticket matches all six numbers Monday night, the winner faces a set of decisions condensed into days. The choice between annuity and lump sum must be made before claiming. The annuity delivers 30 payments over 29 years, with each payment 5 percent larger than the previous one; the cash option releases the full pre-tax sum immediately. Financial planners who work with sudden-wealth clients advise winners to sign the ticket, retain an attorney before contacting lottery officials, and determine whether state law permits claiming through a trust or limited liability company. Several states allow it; others require the winner’s identity to be disclosed upon claiming. The prize is redeemed in the state where the ticket was purchased, not in Florida where the drawing is held.
If no ticket matches Monday night, the jackpot grows again. Wednesday is the next scheduled Powerball drawing and there is no ceiling on how large the accumulation can run. The 2025 Arkansas jackpot required 47 consecutive drawings to produce a winner. The current run has some distance to travel before matching that streak, but the trajectory is clear enough: each no-winner drawing raises the jackpot estimate, raises the volume of tickets sold, and raises the visibility of the next drawing.
Monday’s drawing is set for 10:59 p.m. Eastern. Ticket sales close approximately one hour before the draw in most jurisdictions. Whether the numbers called in Tallahassee that night match any ticket sold over the past several days is the one question that cannot be calculated in advance.
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