The popularity of Christmas gift lotteries collapsed – The winner no longer belongs to the scratcher

Today at Christmas, a scratch card has been found in an even fewer box of goats.

Their sales collapsed when a change in the Lotteries Act made giving lottery tickets as gifts complicated or practically impossible.

This is the first Christmas when the recipient of the gift raffle no longer gets a scratch-off prize for himself. The prize can only be claimed by the giver of the gift, i.e. the raffle buyer, who has identified himself at the time of purchase.

This kind of eats away at the whole idea of ​​gift giving.

Detour the recipient of the gift can still get the profit, but then the taxman can get in the way.

What is new is that today the scratch-off winnings are tax-free only for the buyer of the lottery ticket. If he gives the winnings he has redeemed to the original recipient of the gift lottery, he may have to pay gift tax on it.

In the past, scratch cards have been popular gifts, especially at Christmas, but also during other festive seasons. There has been a clear spike in their sales at that time, says the manager responsible for Veikkaus values, casino games and arcades Sina Hentunen.

This Christmas, according to Hentunen, the sale of lotteries decreased by about 40 percent compared to a year ago. The same amount of drop has already been seen earlier this year.

According to Hentunen, Veikkaus has received a lot of feedback from upset customers for whom buying lottery tickets as a gift has been a popular tradition.

According to Veikkaus, around 700,000 people have bought lotteries this year.

The reason for all this there is a reform of the Lottery Act, which, among other things, requires players to identify themselves. For lottery ticket buyers, the requirement came into force at the beginning of 2024, in coupon games such as Lotto, already earlier.

According to Hentunen, Veikkaus is currently trying to find out if the practice could somehow be changed in the future.

“We will have discussions with various authorities about how giving a lottery gift could be possible in the future,” says Hentunen.

Veikkaus has also thought about smoothing the lottery sales process.

How about if, despite all this, you have received a scratch card as a gift, which reveals a win? How should you act then?

Claiming the profit now requires a completely new kind of teamwork from the gift giver and the gift recipient.

The recipient of the gift must first tell the giver of the gift that the lottery won. After this, he must win the winning lottery ticket to the giver of the gift, i.e. the original buyer of the lottery ticket.

After that, the buyer of the lot must take the lot to the point of sale to be checked. Unlike in coupon games, in the case of lotteries, despite identification, the winnings are not automatically credited to the buyer’s account.

After the lottery has been verified, the buyer of the lottery can give the winning amount as a gift to the original recipient.

Asia however, this is not yet clear. Namely, the taxman intervenes, who treats the lottery winnings like any other monetary gift.

It means that the recipient of the gift must pay gift tax on the winnings they receive if the winnings are at least 5,000 euros.

A maximum of 4,999 euros can be donated tax-free over three years.

The amount of gift tax, on the other hand, depends on the amount of the gift and from whom the monetary gift is received. A lower tax is paid on gifts received from close relatives.

Of course, a large part of the winnings can be classified as tax-free gifts. The smallest profits can be only a few euros or tens.

Many main winnings, on the other hand, are thousands or hundreds of thousands of euros. Veikkaus’ biggest lottery win of all is one million euros.