Actor Stephen Baldwin was arrested this week in New York City on charges of failing to pay personal income tax to the State of New York for 2008, 2009 and 2010. The amount at issue is reportedly $350,000, inclusive of penalties and interest.
If convicted, Baldwin could face up to four years in prison. He’ll answer to the charges on February 5, 2013. I suspect, by that time, that he will have cleared up the matter (though I thought the same thing with respect to Lindsay Lohan). Baldwin has pleaded not guilty to the charges and offered $100,000 as a show of good faith.
Like many high profile taxpayers before him, Baldwin claims that his failure to file was not willful but was the result of trusting professionals that didn’t do their jobs properly. It’s a common issue for working celebs – and a claim that Sharon Osbourne and Nicolas Cage have made before. Of course, trusting tax pros that don’t do their jobs isn’t limited to celebs and can happen to any taxpayer – make sure you pick someone you trust to assist you with your tax matters.
Of course, all of this brings me to my fun trivia question of the day: without looking at Wikipedia, can you name all of the Baldwin brothers? Go!
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What a load of bunk. I guarantee the CPA’s handling their taxes know exactly what they are doing. – that they did their job properly. Any evasion is on the part of the celebrity. Most of these lying bastards make more in a day than many of us make in a year. They should be publicly shamed in the national media and ridiculed as the cheats and liars that they are.