Redacted History: Tax Privacy and the KKK

By Sam Brunson

Tax Lien by Nick Youngson, CC BY-SA 3.0, Alpha Stock Images, Original image at The Blue Diamond Gallery.

A year and a half ago, I learned that in the 1940s, the IRS revoked the Ku Klux Klan’s tax exemption and sued it for almost $700,000 in back taxes. Two years later, the IRS filed a tax lien against the KKK’s assets. While that may not have been the death blow to the 1920s iteration of the KKK, it was certainly part of the death blow.

I’ve since learned a lot more about the whole story, including how the KKK could claim exemption in the first place. I’ve read dozens of contemporary (and retrospective) newspaper articles about the revocation. Heck, I’ve read through a couple Stetson Kennedy archives. I’m dying to write an article about this piece of history.

There’s only one problem: I don’t know why the KKK lost its exemption.

Continue reading “Redacted History: Tax Privacy and the KKK” →

The Fyre Festival: Intro to Ja Rule’s Tax Troubles

By Sam Brunson

Like much of America, I watched a Fyre Festival documentary last week. I chose Hulu’s Fyre Fraud over Netflix’s Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened because I only had time for one, and Fire Fraud had an interview with Billy McFarland. (I’ve since heard great things about Netflix’s documentary, too, so I’ll probably watch it eventually.)

About nineteen and a half minutes into the documentary, we’re introduced to Ja Rule; we see him in an interview (with Wendy, apparently), who says to him, “So you spent two years in prison.”

He responds, “Yeah, I went in on my state charge for the gun charge, and they ran it concurrent with my tax stuff.”

Now, Ja Rule’s tax troubles are probably the least interesting part of the documentary (and are over, iirc, as soon as he laughs after saying “tax stuff”). But I always find celebrity tax evasion interesting, so I thought I’d run it down a little. Continue reading “The Fyre Festival: Intro to Ja Rule’s Tax Troubles” →

The IRS vs. the KKK

By Sam Brunson

My family’s summer vacation has already given me two posts (here and here), and it still promises a couple more, including this one.

As we drove across Alabama, we stopped by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. The BCRI is, in large part, a museum of the civil rights movement; it is not only interesting and informative, but it is deeply powerful and affecting to see how white Americans (mis)treated African Americans, what motivated civil rights activists, and what they faced in their activism.

I didn’t go in looking for taxes, but the Institute handed them to me anyway: Continue reading “The IRS vs. the KKK” →

Can His Fans #SaveNelly?

By Sam Brunson

I listened to Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” last night. And I’m not alone—apparently, over the last couple days, Nelly’s Spotify streams have tripled as compared with the week before.

Why? Taxes, of course.

Apparently, Nelly has joined the storied ranks of popular entertainers who don’t pay their taxes. (See also Willie Nelson, Lauryn Hill, MC Hammer, and Jerry Lee Lewis, among others.[fn1]) Continue reading “Can His Fans #SaveNelly?” →