Terrence Howard hit with back taxes after saying descendants of slaves shouldn't be taxed

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Academy Award-nominated actor Terrence Howard has been ordered by a federal judge to pay nearly $1 million in back taxes, including interest and penalties, after saying that it was “immoral for the United States government to charge taxes to the descendants of slaves.”

The judgment comes after the IRS spent a year trying to collect $578,000 in income taxes that Howard, 54, had not paid between 2010 and 2019, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Justice Department sued the “Empire” star in 2022 over the issue, but the actor’s only response appears to have been an angry voicemail he left on the phone of the case’s lead tax attorney in November.

“Four hundred years of forced labor and never receiving any compensation for it,” the actor said in the message, according to a court transcript. “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.”

In a second, follow-up voicemail message, Howard said, “In truth, the entire United States should, by default, become the property of the descendants of slaves. 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.”

Howard, who reportedly lives in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., never formally responded to the lawsuit, the Inquirer said. Following a court hearing last week in Philadelphia, U.S. District Judge John F. Murphy OK’d a $903,115 default judgment against Howard.

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