Jackpot Locations. The world’s first wide area progressive jackpot system, Megabucks has been awarding life-changing jackpots to lucky winners since 1986. Win big with this jackpot. Oregon Megabucks is the only in-house jackpot game that starts rolling its jackpot at $1,000,000 with drawings being held three days a week! So you get the chance of becoming a multi-millionaire a number of times every week!
By Ed Komenda
THE TAXMAN COMETH
Imagine: You just hit a $33 million jackpot on Megabucks. If you’re lucky, you’ll see half of that after taxes. It’s a cruel world, but Uncle Sam wants his cut. How you choose to receive your payout helps determine exactly how much you’ll cash in. Here’s how it works:
• Jackpot taxes
If you win $1-$1,199: You cash out and go. The IRS doesn’t care about jackpots less than $1,200.
If you win $1,200 – $4,999: Now you’ve entered the tax threshold. You must fill out a W-2G form to report your winnings to the feds, but casinos aren’t obliged to take out withholdings. It will be up to you to pay the taxes later. However, if a winner fails to provide a Social Security number, the casino will then take out 28 percent for the IRS.
If you win $5,000 or more: The IRS will consider your winnings part of your income, which could bump you up to a higher tax bracket. If you hit it really big, expect to pay up to 40 percent in income taxes. For that $33 million Megabucks jackpot, that would be more than $13 million.
• Payment options
Most slot companies give winners two ways to receive their money. The choice you make could have important tax implications.
Lifetime payout: This is a set annual payout for a certain number of years. For IGT, maker of Megabucks, it’s 25 years. On a $33 million jackpot, that means an annual payout of about $1.3 million and an annual tax bill of $525,000. That’s just more than $13.1 million in taxes over the span of the payout.
Lump Sum: Winners have 60 to 90 days to decide whether they want a lump sum or lifetime payment. If you opt for a lump sum, you’ll have to deal with a hefty interest rate. That’ll leave you with 60 percent of your jackpot. But don’t forget: you still have to pay the government. From the remaining $19 million, the IRS will demand another 40 percent, leaving you with about $12 million.
E.J. Coyle’s phone woke him up at 3 a.m. Christmas Eve. It was his boss at Bally Technologies. Someone had just hit a $1.3 million jackpot on a Millionaire Sevens slot at the Four Queens.
Coyle is a jackpot SWAT man, of sorts.
A Bally business analyst by day, he’s the company’s first responder when it comes to big wins. He is one of a four-man team that responds to million-dollar-plus jackpots players hit in Southern Nevada.
Because it’s impossible to know when the next big win will register, Coyle keeps his phone volume set to loud. He doesn’t mind wake-up calls.
“I get excited every time,” Coyle said. “I’m delivering money to people in amounts they never dreamed of. That’s really exciting.”
But his job isn’t as simple as delivering a check.
Step 1. When a player hits a jackpot worth more than $1 million, casino bosses call a Bally control center where technicians monitor the company’s slot machines on computers. A technician confirms where the jackpot hit and calls Coyle or another responder.
Step 2. Coyle typically heads to Bally headquarters on Bermuda Road before heading to a casino. He has to pick up an oversized check for the winner. Bally designs them with logos from specific games: Michael Jackson, NASCAR, Betty Boop. If he’s lucky, Coyle already has the check in his car. He keeps an armful handy, just in case.
Step 3. At the casino, Coyle has to find the winner. It’s usually pretty easy, since crowds tend to form around winning machines.
Step 4. A technician verifies the jackpot and confirms that it was valid. Casinos won’t pay on a machine that malfunctioned.
Step 5. Coyle presents the check to the winner. He interviews them about why they’re in Las Vegas and how they plan to spend their winnings. Most want to remain anonymous and collect their money without a big show.
Step 6. The paperwork. Winners have to provide Coyle with a valid Social Security number to collect their winnings and a bank account number so the cash can be wired. Winners can choose to take a lump sum payment or monthly payouts, typically spread over 20 years.
Step 7. Within 24 hours of hitting a jackpot, all winners automatically receive one-twentieth of their money wired to their bank account. That’s so they have plenty of cash on hand to continue to gamble.
Step 8. Once all the paperwork is filed, staff in Bally’s finance department process it and wire the money to the winner. Sometimes, a representative delivers a real check. As for the giant commemorative checks? Most winners don’t keep them. They are too much of a hassle to transport.
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Megabucks are slots with progressive jackpots, combined into a single network that covers casinos in several American states. The owner and operator of this network is International Game Technology, better known by its abbreviated name IGT.
Megabucks slot is considered as an alternative to state lotteries and enjoys incredible popularity among Americans. Actually, there is an opinion that IGT specifically released it to create a lottery competition. Since the beginning of the eighties in the twentieth century, when the slot was launched for the first time, this slot made dozens of players millionaires.
Thanks to the skillfully organized advertising company, every Megabucks jackpot, when it reaches a considerable size, causes a real excitement among the gambling public. And every hit of the progressive jackpot is widely covered in the media, attracting even more casino visitors to the slot. No other slot in the world is overgrown with so many incredible myths, rumors, and legends. But with all this, there are a lot of gambling experts and just experienced players who consider Megabucks a hideous slot that absolutely does not deserve so much attention. So, who is right: fans or opponents of this slot?
Rank | Casino/Hotel | Details | Booking |
---|---|---|---|
The Mirage | $100-200Avg. Room Rates | View Deals | |
2 | Tropicana | $80-160Avg. Room Rates | View Deals |
3 | Stratosphere | $40-80Avg. Room Rates | View Deals |
4 | Bally's | $100-200Avg. Room Rates | View Deals |
The classic version of the Megabucks slot from IGT is a 3-reel slot machine with the only one payline. In order to qualify for a progressive jackpot, the player must definitely bet three dollars. There are a lot of stories (both true and fictitious) about casino customers, who had the jackpot combination, but they did not receive any jackpot because of a bet less than three dollars.
The progressive jackpot is not completely nullified when a lucky winner gets it but starts to grow from a certain amount. In recent years, this fixed amount is $10,000,000. There are persistent rumors that soon this initial sum of the jackpot should increase by one million.
Strange as it may seem, there is no official information about the probability of winning the Megabucks jackpot. Some casinos say that the player has one chance out of 50 million, while others claim that this is one chance of 17 million. Whatever it was, when the sum of the jackpot is large enough, fans of this slot are ready to fly thousands of kilometers to try their luck.
What do Lady Luck’s favorites have from this slot? Do they get all that huge amount of money that is advertised? When you win a jackpot, events can unfold as follows. First of all, the lucky guy will receive a check for $1,400,000. Then the winner is given two or three months to decide how he wants to get his winnings. There are two options: the amount is divided into annual payments, which will be transferred to the player within twenty-five years, or he can get the winnings immediately at a time, but at a rate of 60% of the jackpot.
That is, having won ten million, the winner can receive in the second variant only six million, but at once and with one payment. After receiving the win, he still has to pay taxes. Unsurprisingly, almost all holders of Megabucks jackpots prefer to receive their winnings in the form of annual payments.
However, in this case, they also have to pay taxes, the Internal Revenue Service of the United States (IRS) very strictly follows this. Subtract from the total amount of the jackpot another 40%, because such winnings are taxed at the maximum rate. So, the next time you hear that someone has won ten million in Megabucks and immediately took all the money, you know that the lucky guy got a little over three and a half million at his disposal.
As already mentioned above, there are a lot of urban legends about the Megabucks slot and its jackpot, mostly of a gloomy nature. For the most part, they describe the tragic fate of players who managed to win a huge jackpot. It is believed that almost all the lucky people either perish or suffer numerous woes. The cause of their numerous misfortunes is the so-called Curse of the Megabucks slot.
Of course, in these stories, there is much more fiction than the truth. However, there is no smoke without fire — some winners, really, seriously suffered after they won the jackpot. In particular, the further life of the waitress Cynthia J. Brennan, who won $34.9 million in 2000, was sad. A month and a half after the win, Cynthia and her sister were hit by a drunk driver. The sister died on the spot, and Cynthia was forever paralyzed. The guy who drove the car in a state of intoxication was imprisoned for twenty-eight years.
But the rumors about the curse of Megabucks spread even before the year 2000. Simply, this accident was widely covered in the press and made people remember about other similar events, which at that time did not become so resonant. In 2003, many media published a story about a 25-year-old player who became the owner of the Megabucks jackpot and either died from a drug overdose in a casino hotel or was killed in a street shootout. IGT companies had to work hard to convince the public of the falsity of these statements.
There are also a lot of rumors about underage players and employees of different casinos who won the Megabucks jackpot but could not get it due to existing rules. But none of these rumors received documentary evidence.
Many experts in the field of gambling suggest that ITG recently made relevant changes to the Megabucks system, which makes the jackpot play less often, but with larger amounts. Although officially the company claims that nothing of the sort has happened, this opinion remains very popular.
Most fans of slot machines and large jackpots are not afraid of the curse of Megabucks and are willing to play in this slot. You can find this slot in almost all real casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, as well as in other establishments in Nevada, California, New Jersey, Mississippi, and some Indian reservations. Each state has its own separate network of Megabucks slots, but the biggest progressive jackpots are expected in Nevada. In other states, jackpots are much smaller.
Experts do not believe in the curse of the Megabucks slot, but this does not stop them from considering this gambling machine not worthy of attention. The fact is that this slot is very unprofitable for the player. Firstly, it has an extremely high percentage of the casino advantage, which reaches 10-15% (for comparison, many slots in the Las Vegas casino are limited to 2-3%). Secondly, the procedure for paying a jackpot is extremely inconvenient. The winner either loses 40% of the amount or gets it in parts for 25 years. But the progressive jackpots of most other slots are paid immediately and in full.
All this suggests that Megabucks is a mediocre slot, which gained its popularity only thanks to record payments and a masterly organized PR campaign.