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# I won $10 in the Taiwan receipt lottery
- URL: https://www.taiwanquest.com/taiwans-national-receipt-lottery/
- Published: 2023-03-26T15:10:22.000Z
- Updated: 2024-11-21T09:05:57.000Z
- Description: Save your receipts for a chance to win half a million dollars…
- Author: Zhen-Kang

Every receipt in Tawian includes an eight-digit lottery number. This system was introduced to reduce tax avoidance, by incentivizing customers to demand receipts—thus creating a record of every transaction.

The government’s tax take increased by 75% when the receipt lottery was introduced in 1951.

It’s so popular that retailers will look at you strangely if you don’t take a receipt—because it could be worth money, stupid! (If you don’t want to participate, you can donate receipts to charity.)

On the 25th of every odd-numbered month (January, March, May, etc), a televised lottery draw picks winning numbers for the previous two-month period.

The draw for January–February 2023 was held yesterday, and I won NT$200 (NZ$10) (🎉💪🤩).

Here’s a sample lottery receipt ticket from [that time I saw a robot hawking snacks at the supermarket](https://www.taiwanquest.com/my-hotel-rooms-out-to-get-me-and-other-stories-from-my-first-24-hours-in-taiwan/):

![Close-up of a lottery receipt from Mia C’bon supermarket. Annotated to highlight the validity period, ticket number and PIN, QR codes, and date and time of purchase.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/5e/e3/5ee3f160-68a0-49ef-af6f-ec70abc1d13e/content/images/2024/11/taiwan-receipt-lottery-ticket.jpg)

A receipt from Mia C’bon supermarket. (Not a winning ticket.)

This ticket’s lottery period is January–February in year 112, which is 2023\. (I’ll write more about this in future—including how, despite being an ’80s child, [I was born in the summer of 69](https://www.taiwanquest.com/republic-of-china-calendar/).)

Nowadays, you have the option to scan the receipt’s QR codes to save it in a lottery-tracking app. This will notify you of any wins—but you still need the actual paper ticket to claim a prize.

Alternatively, the lottery apps include a personal barcode retailers can use to send a digital receipt directly to your device, eliminating paperwork and simplifying the prize-claiming process.

The government issues bonus prizes to digital receipt holders. However, I still accumulate paper receipts because the iPhone lottery apps are all in Chinese…

There are five winning numbers for each draw:

- **1 special prize number** worth NT$10,000,000 (NZ$500,000)
- **1 grand prize number** worth NT$2,000,000 (NZ$100,000)
- **3 first prize numbers** worth NT$200,000 (NZ$10,000) each

There are also smaller prizes for matching *some* of the digits of any first prize number. These range from NT$40,000 (NZ$2,000) for matching the last 7 digits, down to NT$200 (NZ$10) for matching the last 3 digits—which is the prize I won.

To claim my winnings, I can take my ticket and Alien Residence Card (government-issued ID) to a convenience store between April 6 and July 5, where I’ll receive cash or store credit.

Like any gambler, I promise to spend it wisely—on more lottery tickets, of course.\*

\* Free with any purchase.

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