Menu
Tax Notes logo

Off the Beaten Tax: Chris Tucker Might Evade Deebo but Not IRS

Posted on Nov. 24, 2021

Chris Tucker, star of the movies Friday and Rush Hour, is being sued by the IRS for $9.7 million in taxes, plus interest and penalties.

Tucker untimely filed his 2002 return in 2008, reporting $2.5 million in taxes due, and he untimely filed his 2006 return in 2008, reporting $1.2 million in taxes, according to the government’s complaint, filed November 15.

On his 2008 return, Tucker reported $127,169 in taxes due, which the IRS said he fully paid, but following a 2014 examination, the IRS found that Tucker actually owed $1.8 million for that year because his return omitted $9.4 million in dividends. Finally, for 2010, Tucker reported $4,642 in taxes that he paid, but the IRS in 2014 determined Tucker’s actual taxes owed for 2010 were $259,301.

Tucker’s outstanding balances as of September 16 were $4.6 million for 2002, $2.2 million for 2006, $2.4 million for 2008, and $481,552 for 2010, according to the complaint.

Tucker and the IRS attempted to arrange for payment of the taxes through three installment agreements in 2010, 2011, and 2016, and a 2015 offer in compromise, but those attempts fell through and tolled the statute of limitations, the government said.

Alternative Payment Plan

Actor Will Smith said he borrowed $10,000 from a drug dealer after he was wiped out by taxes early in his career.

“I didn’t forget. I just didn’t pay my taxes for about two and a half years,” he told fellow actor Idris Elba during a stage show in London to promote Smith’s autobiography, Will, according to various reports.

Smith described the situation as arising when he was focused primarily on music. He failed to pay the taxes he owed after he and DJ Jazzy Jeff scored a hit single with “Girls Ain’t Nothing but Trouble,” so he sold all his belongings and borrowed the $10,000 from “a friend of mine who was a purveyor of neighborhood pharmaceuticals.”

He then moved to Los Angeles, where he was able to land his role in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air TV series. According to a 2009 biography, Will Smith: A Biography, the IRS garnished 70 percent of his earnings from the show for three years.

“America is a big country. I thought they don’t need everybody’s money. But Uncle Sam wanted his money and I didn’t have it,” the Daily Mail reported Smith saying.

IRS Says No Exemption for Third Eye

A church in Des Moines, Iowa, has sued the IRS over the decision to deny it tax-exempt status because of its illegal use of a hallucinogenic drug.

The Iowaska Church of Healing applied for tax-exempt status in January 2019 but was denied, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported October 25. It expedited an appeal with assistance from Senate Finance Committee member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in April, but the IRS sent a final determination letter of denial in June.

The church’s website says the use of ayahuasca — a beverage derived from a combination of South American plants — can help “awaken your third eye” and “create awareness of your pineal gland.” It asserts that the use of the drug for religious purposes was approved by the Supreme Court in 2006. The website acknowledges the drug’s hallucinogenic properties but says its benefits include healing the mind, body, and spirit.

The church has filed for a religious exemption from the Controlled Substances Act with the Drug Enforcement Administration but has yet to receive a substantial response, the report said.

Church leader Admir Dado Kantarevic is a former personal trainer who pleaded guilty in 2005 to possession of anabolic steroids and was sentenced to a year of probation, the Dispatch report said.

IRS Doesn’t Take Chicken and Waffles as Payment

Shanga A. Hankerson, son of singer Gladys Knight and former owner of Gladys Knight’s Chicken and Waffles restaurant, has been sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to failure to remit $1 million in payroll taxes.

Hankerson opened the restaurant in Atlanta in 1997 and later expanded in Georgia and to Washington, but from 2012 to 2016, he didn’t remit the payroll taxes from the businesses, the Justice Department said in a November 5 release. In addition to the prison time, he was sentenced to one year of supervised release and ordered to pay $1,039,310 in restitution.

The Georgia Department of Revenue closed three of the restaurants and arrested Hankerson in June 2016 over $650,000 in state sales and withholding taxes, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Hankerson allegedly used the money on sex parties and marijuana purchases. Knight then sued Hankerson to have her name and likeness stripped from the restaurant.

Twitch Streamer Dishes Out Tax Advice

Twitch streamer Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa said her purchase of a gas station will help her pay a $6 million federal income tax bill.

Amouranth detailed the purchase in a November 9 Twitter thread. She said she put up $1 million and borrowed the rest, and that she “will take an accelerated depreciation charge of approximately $3m,” which multiplied by her marginal tax rate would result in her owing $1.11 million less in taxes.

“Now we will theoretically have to ‘rectify’ the deferred taxes one day if we sell the property and realize the value (assuming we don’t roll it into another property) BUT in the meantime we’re putting money to work that wouldn’t even have anymore otherwise (tax liability),” she continued. She said that she would likely eventually sell the station and “roll capital gains forward.”

“Bruh I’m gonna pay like $6million this year in federal income tax[.] God forbid I try to lower that a bit via a legal investment maneuver,” she said in a follow-up.

Copy RID