A Rs 250 Purchase Just Won Rs 10 Lakh: The Bill Lottery's First Big Story

Nepal's brand-new Taxpayer Incentive Gift Program produced its first headline-grabbing result within weeks of launch: a shopper's ordinary, modest purchase — reported at around Rs 250 — turned into a bumper prize of Rs 10 lakh once tax was factored in.

The winning entry came from a bill that was properly registered rather than left unclaimed in a drawer. That's the whole point of the scheme: any genuine VAT/PAN bill, however small, is treated as one equal entry in the fortnightly draw.

If you're wondering whether it's worth the minute it takes to keep and register a small bill, this is exactly the kind of result the program is designed to produce. Every fortnight's draw pulls from whatever bills — cash or digital — were actually entered, so a habit of saving and registering bills is the only thing that puts you in the running.

As always, treat news reports like this one as a starting point, not a substitute for checking your own results directly on prize.ird.gov.np.