Winning $640-million lotto ticket sold in Maryland, lottery official says

Winning $640-million lotto ticket sold in Maryland, lottery official says - The Globe and Mail

So what would you do if you won the lottery?  Like everyone else I have often wondered just what I would do. Admittedly our lotteries in the Uk have much smaller prizes but we now have acess to one covering Europe. So the Uk one gives anything from £2 to £6 million  and the Euro one an go as high as £40 million
I may have a slight inside advantage as I was an Accountant before I stopped working. The first thing to realise is that these prizes are tax free. This is important, as the Government cannot call it unearned income and take 50pence in the pound. Any interest that you get is taxable. So you gotta work on getting deductions to avoid paying 50 pence on every pound of interest. I would expect 10% interest per year on these sums, so say you won £25 million on Euro. That is £2.5 million per year.
Many people just lash out on new cars, houses, boats, spending the prize.This is stupid!!!  You put the prize away.On our £25 million I would put away, in offshore banks £20 million. The interest on that is tax free.
Leave the £5 million in the Uk. You have just reduced your tax bill by £1 million.
So you want stuff, but you will gain interest on £5 million at 10%  is a taxable amount of £500,000  50 pence is
£250,000 to the taxman. Not bad so far on a £25 million win.
Take out a bank loan to buy a car and a bank loan to buy a house using the £5 million as surety for these loans.
The interest on the loans is tax deductible and would be about say 5% so on two cars at a total of £200,000 that is £10,000  On a £3 million pound home, which you have built never buy one, that would be £150,000
So you could pay them all from the £5 million buy not me. I would put away £3 million in  term bonds which give about 6% interest returning £180,000 in interest which pays the cars!!  So you now have all of your money and two nice cars. By buying your house as a off shore firm, where your money is invested, will cost you 15% in stamp duty now. However I say build the house. If you set up a building firm to build the house then you get all of the VAT back on the materials and the firm should break even and close when the home is built and sold. The off shore interest covers the home then.  Okay there may be small change to find, but you still got the big wedge, with interest, two cars and a nice house, which is worth much more than you built it for.!!!
If you can be bothered you can pop out of the country every so often and claim to be non domiciled and just pay no tax at all!!  But this is easy.  I like my way as it keeps you busy juggling about but I suppose that is what I used to do so old habits die hard.  Perhaps just having a holiday every now and again is better, after all.