Legal

Lauryn Hill avoided tax “in order to live and create optimally”

By | Published on Wednesday 13 June 2012

Lauryn Hill

Former Fugees singer Lauryn Hill was charged with failing to file tax returns between 2005 and 2007 last week. The IRS estimates that in this time she earned $1.6 million, on which she paid no tax. However, in a statement released via Tumblr the day after being handed a court summons, the singer explained that she had always intended to pay her taxes, but at the time she was trying to avoid “being manipulated and controlled by a media protected military industrial complex”.

In the statement, Hill said: “For the past several years, I have remained what others would consider underground. I did this in order to build a community of people, like-minded in their desire for freedom and the right to pursue their goals and lives without being manipulated and controlled by a media protected military industrial complex with a completely different agenda … These devices of control, no matter how well intentioned (or not), can have a devastating outcome on the lives of people, especially creative types who must grow and exist within a certain environment and according to a certain pace, in order to live and create optimally”.

Elsewhere in the lengthy statement, she said: “I did whatever needed to be done in order to insulate my family from the climate of hostility, false entitlement, manipulation, racial prejudice, sexism and ageism that I was surrounded by. This was absolutely critical while trying to find and establish a new and very necessary community of healthy people, and also heal and detoxify myself and my family while raising my young children”.

Finally, she explained: “I conveyed all of this when questioned as to why I did not file taxes during this time period. Obviously, the danger I faced was not accepted as reasonable grounds for deferring my tax payments, as authorities, who despite being told all of this, still chose to pursue action against me, as opposed to finding an alternative solution”.

Hill is due in court on 26 Jun. If convicted she faced up to three years in prison and fine of up to $300,000.



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