Add R&B crooner R. Kelly to the looong list of stars who have had trouble with the IRS.The “I Believe I Can Fly” singer is on the hook for a total of more than $6 million.
Ouch.
Over the summer it was Lauryn Hill who may be facing jail time because of her tax debt. But Kelly, 45, appears to be eager to get past this so nobody would even be tempted to utter the word “jail” to him.
TMZ reported that Kelly owed $1.3 million in unpaid taxes for 2011. This is on top of $4.8 million he owed for the years 2005-2010—bringing his total bill to about $6.2 million.
A Kelly spokesperson said to MTZ, “He takes this very seriously and is already communicating with the IRS about the payment process to quickly resolve the issue.”
Who are these celebs hiring to do their taxes, the mailman?
Hill faces three years in prison for misdemeanor tax evasion. She is out of prison on an unsecured bond of $150,000 and will be sentenced on November 29. Hill was charged after failing to file tax returns from 2005 to 2007, a time during which she earned $1.8 million.
Hill initially showed no remorse for her actions and when a judge asked if she consciously chose not to pay her taxes. She simply answered “yes.”
Hill also posted a long blog post on her Tumblr blog, in which she said the tax evasion occurred when she had moved her family “from society in order to protect them.”
She also wrote: “For the past several years, I have remained what others would consider underground. I did this in order to build a community of people, like-minded in their desire for freedom and the right to pursue their goals and lives without being manipulated and controlled by a media protected military industrial complex with a completely different agenda.”
And she was not done. Hill also blamed prejudices prevalent in the country for her unwillingness to pay taxes.
“As my potential to work, and therefore earn freely, was being threatened, I did whatever needed to be done in order to insulate my family from the climate of hostility, false entitlement, manipulation, racial prejudice, sexism and ageism that I was surrounded by,” she continued. “This was absolutely critical while trying to find and establish a new and very necessary community of healthy people, and also heal and detoxify myself and my family while raising my young children.”
