Euromillionaire winners.....

[askyourgran]

Not sure which topic to put this in.. but. My Granddaughter works in a large office, one of the Departments chipped in for the Euromillions and the staff have won £1m in the lottery millionaire numbers last weekend. They were are set to win £40.000 each, but she told me that they only pick up £17.000 each because they didn't declare themselves as a syndicate when they entered the draw, therefore they have to pay tax on the £1m. I think that is a rip-off, how many people would know to declare and indeed how to declare a sydicate. Has anyone heard about this before?

[Ann]

I used to be in a lottery syndicate over 10 years ago and I'm sure we had to sign an official form in our office to state we were a syndicate and how many were in it.

[B00]

ouchy!

Still, £17.000's not to be sniffed at.

[craft1948]

Yep I was in a syndicate and you could download a form to register.

[HowardKennitby]

Extract from lottery site

Q.Why is a syndicate agreement necessary?
A.

National Lottery prizes are not normally chargeable gains for the purposes of UK Capital Gains Tax and will not be assessed for UK Income Tax. If a prize is won and shared by a syndicate who have entered into a written agreement before the win, then syndicate members should not be liable to pay UK inheritance tax.

In the event of a big win, HM Revenue and Customs may require to see the agreement as evidence of the group agreement. In the absence of a suitably drawn up syndicate agreement, any of the prize monies distributed to other syndicate winners may be subject to inheritance tax. It is important to note that HM Revenue and Customs law and practice may change. The comments are based on our understanding of HM Revenue and Customs law and practice as at September 2010. For detailed tax advice, please contact a solicitor or a suitably qualified tax professional.

Neither The National Lottery nor Camelot UK Lotteries Limited has any responsibility or liability for the organisation, management or operation of any syndicate.

full details here

http://www.national-l...p/help/syndicates.ftl

[petal54]

where I used to work wepaid in tosyndicate,never won more than a tenner at a time,hardly got money back by end of year

[craft1948]

Does that also push her into the higher tax bracket for the rest of the year?

[Nini74]

i did something similar in work the other day (although we didn't win, sadly!). However, when i did it on-line, i'm sure it asked me to tick a box if it was a syndicate - which I did, but then it wanted a whole load more details so i didn't bother. Anyway, long story short, we ended up just getting the junior to pick up the tickets from a shop, so certainly no question about it being a syndicate then. Not sure really what would happen if we won big ..... wouldn't mind having to find out though x

[MASS1961]

That means £575,000 in tax??

Is that right?

[Nini74]

hadn't seen HowardKennedy's post before replying - i'm getting straight on to the site tomorrow morning and sorting out a syndicate agreement x

[Hopkirk]

Perhaps they should have quickly made up the appropriate forms, and dated them last week.

[Nini74]

*Kennitby - sorry!

[askyourgran]

I hadn't heard of that before. Most of them in the office are young people who probably had a whip round because of the Euromillion Jackpot weekend. As you say £17.000 isn't too bad

[sunny-dave]

The whole £1million will be paid tax free to the person who bought the ticket.

The only possible tax liability is Inheritance Tax if the person who actually bought the ticket dies within 7 years.

"In the event of a big win, HM Revenue and Customs may require to see the agreement as evidence of the group agreement. In the absence of a suitably drawn up syndicate agreement, any of the prize monies distributed to other syndicate winners may be subject to inheritance tax"

I believe that it should be possible to distribute the entire £1million as long as each recipient signs an agreement to pay their share of any tax if it becomes liable (a maximum of 40%)

[Ellipsis]

Unlucky, but when the lottery was first set up this came up quite a lot. So much so that we even have syndicate forms drawn up within our extended family to avoid awkward things like inheritance tax. My Nan does the lottery for example, and she's over 90 ...

On the bright side the tax should be a lot less than you have implied. £23,000 tax on £40,000 would be a 57.5% tax rate. It would definitely be worth all of them chipping in and getting some professional tax advice from a top firm, preferably one that's dealt with a similar situation before. Camelot may be able to offer their own advice or suggest a firm ...

[HowardKennitby]

I am still unsure why this 'tax' would be deducted at source.

[tamborine]

I sell them in hospital shop to staff who club together; I haven't seen anything on the machine for syndicates

[sunny-dave]

It won't Howard - see my post above ...

[HowardKennitby]

SD

Yes, but that is not the situation the OP is asking about

[sunny-dave]

Yes it is - technically all tickets are bought by a single person & prizes paid (tax free) to a single person.

Any syndicate arrangement is irrelevant to the Lottery Promoter - just an agreement between friends/colleagues.

[Ellipsis]

> getting some professional tax advice from a top firm

Should be under £5K out of the million, i.e. £200 each, and could save tens or hundreds of thousands ...