Actor Terrence Howard arrives for the 71st Emmy Awards at the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles on September 22, 2019. (Photo by VALERIE MACON / AFP) (Photo credit should read VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images)
Whew! Terrence Howard has to hand over nearly $1 million to the federal government after a failed attempt to connect the past to the present when it comes to paying his taxes!
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, last week, a federal judge in Philly ordered the ‘Empire’ actor to pay $903,115 for “back taxes, interest, and penalties.” This was a default judgment given that Terrence had reportedly swerved the IRS for about 14 months.
Originally, the government was asking Terrence Howard to cough up $578,000 for failing to pay taxes between 2010 and 2019. To collect their coins, the Department of Justice reportedly sued Terrence in 2022. But, the ‘Hustle & Flow’ star never formally responded in court.
Instead, last November, he gave the lead tax attorney in the lawsuit a phone call she won’t forget. A transcript of what he said on a voicemail is reportedly among the court filings.
Terrence Howard, of course, denied owing anything and allegedly threatened to blast the attorney on social media over the lawsuit. But, he never brought the issue to the innanet streets.
However, he did tell the attorney that Black Americans shouldn’t be paying taxes anyway, and here’s why.
“Four hundred years of forced labor and never receiving any compensation for it,” Terrence Howard said in the message. “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.”
After the voicemail cut off mid-sentence, Howard called back and continued going in! He threatened to fight this uphill battle in court but never formally responded to the lawsuit.
“In truth, the entire United States should, by default, become the property of the descendants of slaves,” Howard said. “But since you do not have the ability [or] the courage to do it, let’s try this in court. … We’re gonna bring you down.”
All in all, the actor’s main message was that it’s “immoral for the United States government to charge taxes to the descendants of slaves,” per the transcript.
One thing about the IRS though, it was persistent in trying to track Terrence down in the last year or so.
Early last year, they pulled up to his Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania home to serve him with the lawsuit. But the gated home appeared to be unoccupied and its intercom system was disabled. By the summertime, U.S. Marshals even tracked him to a hotel in Jackson, Mississippi under the impression he was staying there while filming a movie. But the hotel denied he had been staying there.
Process servers tried to find him at addresses in Chicago, Lafayette Hill in Pennsylvania, and La Habra in California and had no luck. Finally, last fall, they tracked him down at a scheduled appearance at the Twin Cities Film Festival in Minnesota and served him with the lawsuit.
He left the voicemail for the tax evasion case lawyer a month later. But three months later, he still hadn’t responded in court, leading U.S. District Judge John F. Murphy to grant the government’s request for the default judgment of $903,115.
Terrence Howard hasn’t yet publicly reacted to the judgment.
Roommates, did Terrence Howard cook or nah?
