The Biggest Celebrity IRS Audits

In 2016, TMZ reported that Grammy Award-winning hip-hop performer Nelly had been hit with an IRS tax lien of more than $2.4 million. TMZ also said Nelly, whose real name is Cornell Iral Haynes Jr., tried to work out a settlement with the IRS. Nelly’s fans came to his rescue. According to BET, fans on Twitter started a social-media campaign to help the rapper pay off his debts by streaming his songs.

The rapper (“Holla Holla”) and actor (“Half Past Dead”), born Jeffrey Atkins, is no stranger to legal troubles, with arrests on drug and gun possession charges, and a two-year prison sentence for attempted possession of a weapon. In 2011, he received an additional 28 months – to be served concurrently – for failing to pay taxes on his earnings from 2004 to 2006. In 2021, it was reported that Ja Rule and his wife, Aisha Atkins, owed the IRS a total of about $3 million for that tax period and also the period from 2012 to 2017. He is said to have struck a deal with the government to pay off the debt and avoid more jail time.

Rapper Rick Ross settled a tax bill of more than $4 million in 2012. He was originally hit with a tax lien in 2016 and the IRS was threatening to seize his assets. Representatives of Ross told Billboard magazine that the “issue arose from an incorrect filing by a prior accountant for the 2012 tax year.”

Besides an arrest and getting into fights in 2012, comedian Katt Williams had major tax problems that year. He owed the IRS $4 million in taxes, stretching back to 2008. Williams was in the hole for $3.2 million from 2008 and $825,392 from 2009. Those money totals did not include a 2010 lien in which the IRS demanded $284,000.

Boxer Floyd Mayweather’s tax problems have been well-chronicled, with some news sources putting the amount owed at as much as $22 million. Mayweather’s tax issue is one of the reasons why he agreed to fight Irish martial-arts fighter Conor McGregor in a match in Las Vegas in 2017. Mayweather had asked the IRS for a reprieve on his taxes until after his bout with McGregor. “It’s the latest in a cycle for Mayweather,” said ESPN, “who paid $15.5 million in taxes for 2001, 2003-2007 and 2009 only after the IRS filed liens against him, according to documents filed to the Clark County Recorder in Las Vegas.”