Actor Terrence Howard reportedly said it is “immoral for the United States government to charge taxes to the descendants of slaves” after being ordered to pay nearly $1 million in back taxes.
According to a report from the Philadelphia Inquirer on Thursday, a federal judge in Philadelphia ordered the Academy Award-nominated actor to pay $903,115 in back taxes, penalties and interest.
“For more than a year, the 54-year-old star of the TV hit ‘Empire,’ whose last listed address was in Plymouth Meeting, rebuffed IRS efforts to collect $578,000 in income taxes it says he failed to pay between 2010 and 2019,” the Inquirer reported.
The Inquirer reported the Justice Department sued Howard in 2022 and, after failed efforts to “engage Howard in court,” the actor sent a voicemail to the phone of the case’s lead tax attorney in November 2023.
Per court filings, Howard reportedly “denied owing anything and threatened to shame her by posting the lawsuit against him on the internet.”
“Four hundred years of forced labor and never receiving any compensation for it,” the actor allegedly said in the voicemail. “Now you have the gall to try and prosecute and charge taxes to the descendants of a broken people that you are responsible for causing the breakage.”
