What a relief. Here we are in the midst of that season when we remember how much we dislike taxes, and along come some judges to lighten our burden.

Having ruminated on the matter since May, the judges on the state Court of Appeals -- well, two out of the three who heard the case -- declare that people buying tickets in the N.C. Education Lottery may be parting themselves from their money to support a vital state function, but they sure as heck aren't paying a tax.

This has to come as good news to faithful lottery customers -- a band of determined optimists among whom can be counted Regina Gilchrist. She described her lottery-playing habits the other day in a conversation with N&O reporters.

When she buys tickets at her usual outlet, a convenience store on New Bern Avenue in Raleigh, she opts for the Pick 3 game. That involves choosing three digits for $1 a ticket. She plays three numbers five times a day, six days a week, meaning her weekly lottery outlay is $90. She's angling for the top prize of $500, although she hasn't won yet.

Now there's a new twist: As of last Monday, the Pick 3 game is being offered twice a day, in a nod by lottery officials to its steady popularity. Gilchrist was planning to get in on the extra action. She said she expected to follow the same ticket-buying strategy for the new drawing, held during the day (the other drawing takes place at night). That would push her lottery spending to $180 a week.

"I'm just trying to hit some money," she said. "You know, I got three boys."

Gilchrist's job as a babysitter brings in about $75 a day. Maybe her household income is pushing into the Jim Goodnight range, and even if it isn't, she's entitled to make her own budgeting decisions. Still, it doesn't stretch the imagination to think that she plays the lottery because she senses she really can't afford not to. What if one of those tickets she buys for a buck turns out to be worth half a grand?

Appeals court Judges James Wynn Jr. and Bob Hunter rejected the argument that the lottery legally is a tax. Judge Ann Marie Calabria begged to differ. The state Supreme Court may yet weigh in. If the yes-it's-a-tax side were to prevail, the legislature would have to go back and jump through some more hoops to make the lottery statute hold water.

However that gets sorted out, who can maintain with a straight face that when people are playing the lottery because they need to win, that it doesn't amount to a tax on the poor?

And in North Carolina, we do quite a good enough job of taxing the poor even if the lottery doesn't count. Consider a recent study by the N.C. Budget & Tax Center, which keeps an eye on such matters from a social justice perspective.

Looking at North Carolina households in the bottom fifth on the income scale -- less than $15,000 -- they pay an average of 10.7 percent of their income in state and local taxes. That figure declines as income increases. It's 8.2 percent for households with income between $73,000 and $144,000. For families earning above $370,000 -- the top 1 percent on the scale -- the state and local tax bill amounts to 7.1 percent of income.

North Carolina's income tax is fairly progressive, with rates rising for those who can afford to pay more. But sales and property taxes take a bigger bite from the less well-off. And those folks also don't benefit as much from deductions on their federal taxes for state taxes paid.

Frankly, it's a tax system that needs a hard look on grounds of both fairness and adequacy. But it turns out that looking hard at the state's tax set-up is more than most legislators can bear. Passing the lottery -- which puts upwards of $300 million a year in the treasury -- was a lot more fun.

Not that the lottery was supposed to replace any traditional taxes. No way. We would have been shocked to see such a thing. And to make sure it didn't happen, the legislature set up a committee that was supposed to keep an eagle eye peeled, and to guarantee that profits were channeled exclusively to education.

An important job, right? So important that almost two years since it was created, the Lottery Oversight Committee has never even met. This we learned last week from Chris Fitzsimon, director of N.C. Policy Watch, whose article about the all-too-lackadaisical committee ran on our Other Opinion page last Wednesday.

Lottery Executive Director Tom Shaheen responded with a letter to the People's Forum noting that the lottery has had plenty of oversight in the form of audits and from the Lottery Commission itself.

We'll grant him that. But the legislative panel never would have been set up if there weren't real concerns about how lottery money would be used. At least if folks are going to be lured into playing, they ought to be assured that their money isn't being used to ease the tax burden generally. Otherwise, the lottery itself will look more like a tax than it already does.