‘Empire’ star Terrence Howard hit with nearly $1M judgment after saying it’s ‘immoral’ to tax descendants of slaves

A federal judge in Philadelphia has ordered Academy Award-nominated actor Terrence Howard to pay nearly $1 million in back taxes, interest, and penalties after he allegedly threatened a Justice Department lawyer and maintained that it was “immoral for the United States government to charge taxes to the descendants of slaves.”

For more than a year, the 54-year-old star of the TV hit Empire, whose last listed address was in Plymouth Meeting, rebuffed IRS efforts to collect $578,000 in income taxes it says he failed to pay between 2010 and 2019.

And despite a months-long effort to engage Howard in court after the Justice Department sued him in 2022, the actor’s only response was a voicemail he allegedly left on the phone of the case’s lead tax attorney in November.

According to a transcript of that message, included in court filings, Howard denied owing anything and threatened to shame her by posting the lawsuit against him on the internet.

“Four hundred years of forced labor and never receiving any compensation for it,” the actor said in the message. “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.”

The recording cut Howard off midsentence, but he called the attorney back to continue.

“In truth, the entire United States should, by default, become the property of the descendants of slaves,” he said. “But since you do not have the ability [or] the courage to do it, let’s try this in court. … We’re gonna bring you down.”

Despite that vow, Howard never formally responded to the lawsuit. And after a court hearing last week in Philadelphia, U.S. District Judge John F. Murphy granted the government’s request to enter a $903,115 default judgment against the actor, a ruling that was first reported by the legal news service Law360.

Efforts to reach Howard at a number he left on that voicemail and through a lawyer who at one point told Justice Department lawyers that he might represent the actor in the case were unsuccessful Wednesday.

But his latest tangle with the government bore a striking resemblance to some of the characters he’s portrayed in his dozens of film and TV roles throughout the years.

In the 2005 film Hustle & Flow, Howard played a pimp and aspiring rapper whose promising music career is interrupted by a prison sentence for assault. The role earned Howard an Academy Award nomination for best actor.

His best-known recent work — playing drug dealer-turned-hip hop mogul Lucious Lyon on the TV hit Empire from 2015 to 2020 — featured a seasons-long plot arc involving Justice Department efforts to put him behind bars.

Despite that success, accusations of failure to pay taxes have dogged Howard throughout his career.

State tax liens totaling nearly $639,000 were filed against his 2,450-square-foot property in Plymouth Meeting in 2005 and 2006, both of which were later settled, according to court records. The IRS imposed a $1.1 million lien on the property in 2010 for Howard’s failure to pay income taxes in 2007 and 2008.

In 2019, the State of California Franchise Tax Board hit Howard with another lien, alleging he owed $144,000 dating back to 2010. The board named him last year on a list of the state’s Top 500 tax scofflaws, saying he owed $256,00 in back taxes, penalties, and fees.

And in 2019, People magazine reported that federal prosecutors in Philadelphia had opened a criminal investigation into Howard and his wife, Mira Pak, for tax evasion.

It remains unclear whether that probe is still ongoing or was closed without charges. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined Wednesday to confirm or deny the existence of any investigation.

Since at least 2000, Howard has listed his primary residence as his home in Plymouth Meeting, according to public records. But the property, located behind a secured gate, appeared to be unoccupied and the intercom disconnected when the government first tried to serve him with the latest lawsuit against him early last year.

What followed was what Justice Department lawyers described as a lengthy and at times exasperating effort to track down the actor and notify him of the suit against him in federal court in Philadelphia.

At one point last summer, the government dispatched U.S. Marshals to a hotel in Jackson, Miss., where Howard was believed to be staying while shooting a movie, only to be told there was no record that he had been staying there.

Process servers also sought to notify Howard of the suit at an address in Chicago and two properties in Lafayette Hill — one previously owned and since sold by his ex-wife, Lori Howard, and another at which his daughter, Heaven Howard, opened the door. She told government representatives her father no longer lived there and refused to call him to notify him of the suit.

A Los Angeles process server said he heard Howard cursing and swearing in the background, when he attempted to serve notice of the suit in July at a home in La Habra, Calif., owned by Howard’s wife.

“The woman said that Terrence Howard was home and went to get him,” the server said in an affidavit filed with the court. She returned to report that Howard refused to come to the door.

Eventually, the government succeeded in serving Howard notice of the lawsuit last fall, after it tracked him down at a scheduled appearance at the Twin Cities Film Fest in St. Louis Park, Minn., according to court records.

In the voicemail he left a month later for the Justice Department’s lead attorney on the case, Maria Elizabeth Ruwe, Howard identified the lawsuit by its docket number, but he failed to acknowledge or respond to it in court in the three months that followed.

In entering his default judgment against Howard on Thursday, Murphy, the judge, said the government had provided “more than sufficient detail” to demonstrate its efforts to engage the actor over the past 14 months.

He asked Ruwe whether there were any potential criminal charges looming for the alleged threats Howard made against her. She said she’d reported them to Justice Department security, prompting an investigation.

“I don’t know the results of it,” she said.