Judge orders Empire star Terrence Howard to pay nearly $1 million in back taxes

A U.S. federal judge does not appear to have been moved by actor Terrence Howard’s claims that it is “immoral for the United States government to charge taxes to the descendants of slaves,” issuing an order today for Howard to pay nearly $1 million he allegedly owes in unpaid taxes and attendant fees. Per Deadline, the judge issued the order as a default judgment against Howard, who the IRS says owes $578,000 in taxes from the years between 2010 and 2019—default, in this case, since the Empire star apparently hasn’t responded to governments communications since leaving a fiery multi-part voicemail for Justice Department officials in 2022.

In said call, Howard—who apparently ran out of time mid-sentence, and then called back to continue his missive—expounded at length on the topic of taxes, including saying that “Four hundred years of forced labor and never receiving any compensation for it. Now you have the gall to try and prosecute and charge taxes to the descendants of a broken people that you are responsible for causing the breakage.” (It is not clear if Howard also attempted to explain away his tax bill with his controversial logic system “Terryology,” as highlighted in his 2015 claim that he could prove that 1 times 1 equals 2.)

The 2010s were a complicated decade for Howard, starting with his abrupt removal from his starring role in the Iron Man franchise in favor of Don Cheadle. (Reportedly, due to a pay cut; a series of high-profile divorce filings, abuse claims, and restraining orders during this era probably didn’t help.) None of that stopped him from having one of the biggest shows on the planet circa 2015 with Empire…before that series also ultimately dissolved under a variety of bizarre legal circumstances (not all of them Howard’s fault, to be fair). Hell, this isn’t even his first 6-figure-plus fight with the IRS: He’s been hit with tax liens by multiple state tax boards and the Internal Revenue Service in the past, suggesting his philosophical commitment to not paying taxes is, at least, not a flash-in-the-pan development.