Wesley Snipes, the actor who fought an unsuccessful battle against the Internal Revenue Service over his unpaid taxes and ultimately served a nearly three-year prison term, is now in a fresh dispute with the agency.
Snipes has reportedly petitioned the U.S. Tax Court to allow the actor to enter the IRS’s Fresh Start initiative and lower the amount of unpaid taxes that the IRS is assessing him. The IRS denied Snipes’ offer to pay $842,000 and is instead demanding the actor pay $17.5 million, according to
Snipes was convicted in 2008 on three misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his taxes for three years for 1999, 2000 and 2001, although he was acquitted of felony charges (see
Snipes served his prison term from December 2010 to April 2013, according to
He objected to the IRS’s estimate, and the IRS is now asking for $17.5 million. But Snipes’s attorneys are disputing that amount, saying, “Petitioner is trying to put his life back together after being led astray by unscrupulous advisors, and he desperately needs the fresh start which Respondent's ‘Fresh Start Initiative' offers.”