Save. Spend. Splurge.

Even rich people have money problems, look at Lauryn Hill

Celebrity Lauryn Hill had been sentenced to 3 months for tax evasion for failing to pay nearly $1 million in taxes.

“This is not someone who stands before the court penniless,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Madeline Cox Arleo said at the hearing.

“This is a criminal matter. Actions speak louder than words, and there has been no effort here to pay these taxes.”

That all changed Sunday. 

“Ms Hill has not only now fully paid prior to sentencing her taxes, which are part of her criminal restitution, but she has additionally fully paid her federal and state personal taxes for the entire period under examination through 2009,” her attorney, Nathan Hochman.

Source

lauryn-hill

In her words, she stopped paying taxes for these reasons:

Hill gives a long list of complaints about the exploitative music industry, what she calls a climate of “hostility, false entitlement, manipulation, racial prejudice, sexism and ageism.”

Finally she decided she’d had enough: “Having put the lives and needs of other people before my own for multiple years, and having made hundreds of millions of dollars for certain institutions, under complex and sometimes severe circumstances, I began to require growth and more equitable treatment, but was met with resistance.”

She retreated to a simpler life and stopped paying taxes as a form of civil disobedience: “I also embraced my right to resist a system intentionally opposing my right to whole and integral survival.”

…. are you kidding me?

She has been a recluse for the past 14 years hiding away from society.

I have a feeling all of her money is tied up in assets which is why she didn’t have the cash on hand.

House-rich but cash-poor, eh?

Maybe she was just waiting for her money in the stock market to recover from the crisis 😉

At any rate, this is just another example of how even though you have lots of money and people think you’re uber rich, you aren’t any better off at managing your money than someone who has a fraction of a fraction of what you have.

She is really, no better off than someone living paycheque to paycheque. If only they had cash stores for celebrities that could lend you almost a million bucks to clear your taxes.

Being rich does not mean you know how to handle your money.

Being rich doesn’t mean you are exempt from any kind of financial woe or problem.

Being rich in and of itself is not the answer, but thinking in a strong money mindset for the long-term and acting accordingly, is.

Unless you’re Zooey Deschanel of course.

3 Comments

  • save. spend. splurge.

    Exactly. I just wish they governments would demonstrate that they can use the money effectively. There’s so much corruption where I am that it is disheartening to pay all that money and drive through all these potholes.

  • Abigail @ipickuppennies

    Sorry, no. She doesn’t get to pull the civil disobedience BS. She can’t protest sexism and ageism in her industry by not paying taxes to a country. And if it really had been civil disobedience, she’d have made noise about it more than just when she was about to be sentenced.

    Just own up to the fact that you managed your money poorly and pay up.

  • ArianaAuburn

    If she were a little more aggressive, she could have just renounced her US citizenship, paid an exit tax and moved to another country if she were very much against paying taxes to the IRS. But that’s another story.

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