Look at this smiling ponim–if it doesn’t make you sick it should. This is the face of a cheat who got off easy. (Phil Sandlin/AP)
Wesley Snipes Cleared of Serious Tax Charges
No felony conviction. A maximum of three years in prison when he faced sixteen. He repays what he owes plus interest and penalties. The federal jury gave him a pretty sweet deal.
I probably haven’t seen any of his movies in ten years or so. But anyone who goes to see this guy’s future movies is aiding and abetting a tax cheat. We average Joes of the world earn our living and pay our taxes. We’re not happy about it but we do it because it’s the right thing to do. We don’t earn $100-million over ten years time. Maybe if we did we’d be as disgustingly greedy as Wesley Snipes. But I’d like to think not. We’d probably just get good accountants and pay what we owed. Not Wesley. He don’t owe nutin’ to nobody. Instead of hiring a good accountant he hires a fraud who tells him he doesn’t owe anything. When the feds finally catch up to him, he does hire the best tax attorney his $100-million can buy to get him off. And he does.
His lawyer says “he will make full amends and pay everything.” How about making amends for the thousands of Americans who will now flock to the tax defiance movement and refuse to pay their taxes and dare the government to come after them? Will he make amends for the impression he’s created among them that they too can get away with murder (or at least cheating)?
If I were the judge I would dictate that Snipes pay his entire $17 million tax bill in pennies and that he be forced to physically carry every single one of them in wheelbarrows to the IRS office. This guy has it too easy. He thinks the world and the government owes him something because of his fame or his wealth or whatever. Well, I’ve got news for him. No one owes him anything.
And if Wesley doesn’t owe anything to us, the rest of his fellow citizen tax payers who have to shoulder the extra burden he imposes on us, what do we owe to him, the Hollywood star?? As far as I’m concerned, let his career go to hell in a handbasket. Don’t go to Wesley Snipes movies.
I was wondering why RS suddenly decided to pick on Wesley Snipes. I don’t think he’s Jewish. I never heard that he gave money to West Bank settlements. And then I found this.
Now I get it, Snipes fathered Israel.
BTW, Pettis made similar claims agains Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey (wtf) and Prince. Someone should teach this lady biology. Anyway the case was dismissed when the biological father was determined.
I am also perplexed. Professional tax advisers who lure clients into crazy strategies to avoid taxes may well be criminals. Their clients are dupes. In NYC every few years, for example, a bunch of city employees are reported to have filed tax returns premised on nutty theories — they claim hundreds of dependents, for example.They get caught, often lose their jobs and pensions. What is there about Wesley Snipes that sets your teeth on edge. Do you know something not generally reported? If so, it’s not in your post.
City employees don’t owe shield $100-million in taxable income from the government. Plus the city employees you’re referring to don’t deny their obligation to PAY taxes, they merely engaged in fraud to REDUCE their share of tax liability. Snipes denied he HAD any obligation to pay taxes period. There’s a qualitative difference.
Have you read the articles about his trial and the ways in which he attempted to get out of his obligations? He sends the IRS a bounced check for $14 million to pay his taxes while denying he has any obligation to pay at all. If you haven’t read the rest of his chicanery, you should. This is an intelligent & rich human being. You and I know we owe taxes. Would you believe some jackass defrocked CPA who tells you you have no obligation whatsoever to pay taxes? Snipes chose to believe this tripe when he, & any other semi-intelligent U.S. citizen would know otherwise. He should pay & he should’ve payed more dearly than he did in this jury verdict.
Having seen Snipes on the Letterman show, part of the issue is that he is dumber than a doornail. For example, he was bragging about being an Executive Producer on the movie he was hawking (note that HE brought up the topic). So Letterman naturally asked him what an Executive Producer actually entails. He stammered and made some stupid comments that made it clear that despite having been an actor for so many years – he had absolutely no clue what an Executive Producer was…
I think I may have just insulted doornails…
You have to be pretty clueless to think that you can waltz into a federal courtroom and convince a judge, who himself is paid out of the public kitty, that you don’t have to pay taxes. But if you’re gonna be a tax protester, you should display some principle about it. Snipes certainly has the right to say, “Let’s repeal the 16th Amendment to the Constitution and abolish the IRS.” Or he could take a Thoreau-like civil disobedience stand: “I’m sick and tired of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I’m not going to pay for them.” I somehow can’t see him doing this, however.
there is no law, in plain English that states in one or two sentences that citizens are required to pay a Federal income tax. The information is out there to do proper research and realize this yourself. I would gladly pay my taxes if I knew it was going back to the nation but it doesn’t. Our federal taxes are going to pay the interest on the money loaned to the government by the Federal Reserve, a private non-government sanctioned institution. WTF? The IRS uses fear and threats to get us to abide a law that never existed. Down with the FED!! We need to take back our power of government to print our own currency!!! Private banks fund both sides of wars and sometimes instigate wars to make $$ on the death of millions! WAKE UP AMERICA. protest, if you love your country. you have the right to question your government you are not a terrorist you are all patriots!!
@theRepubic: Wasn’t that Wesley Snipes’ argument. Guess it didn’t go over too well in his case as he’s now in the slammer.
I’m always amused by people confidently substitute their own severely limited lay knowledge about constitutional & tax law for 200 years of jurisprudence on these matters.