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Celebrity Tax Evasion > Willie Nelson Tax Evasion

Willie Nelson has been in the music industry for the last four decades. Through the years he has built an impressive and expansive catalog. Most of these collections are actually songs that Willie Nelson wrote himself. So far he has written over 2,500 songs and built a 20 song collection of all his music.

Willie Nelson’s career music career started at a young age. Nelson and his sister lived with their grandparents after the divorce of their parents during the Great Depression. They were raised in a small farm town and came to love music. The children were allowed to select an instrument that they could learn; Nelson picked the guitar while his sister picked the piano. His first public performance was when he was four years old. His first professional gig happened when he was ten years old. He went on to play with a band in high school.

Nelson’s first single was recorded in 1956 when he used his own money to press 500 copies of a song he wrote called ‘No Place For Me’. He used his opportunity as a radio show host to sell the copies. He also sold another song ‘Family Bible’ for $50 to his guitar teacher, who also sold it to Claude Gray who made a hit with it in 1960.

Nelson was first seen in the charts in 1962 with the song, ‘Willingly’ a duet he did with his wife then, Shirley Collie. During the 60s, Nelson was known as the songwriter who wrote other musicians songs for all the hits he wrote. He temporarily left show business to become a pig farmer but he was back in the mid 70s. It was during this come back that his stage appearance changed, while previously wore suits and short hair, he now wore blue jeans and wore his hair long, usually covered with a bandana.

He also rebelled by sharing the stage with rock ‘n’ roll musicians. Fellow country musicians considered this career suicide but Nelson went on to succeed in both genres. Nelson appeared in a number of movies with most notable appearances in ‘The Electric Horseman’ and ‘Honeysuckle Rose’

Willie Nelson was famed for being part of the outlaw country movement in the 1970s.Could this be the reason why he failed to pay his taxes? The Internal Revenue Service served Nelson with a tax lien of $16.7 million in 1990.The debt was too big and Nelson could not foot the bill, the IRS froze his bank accounts and auctioned most of the entertainer’s property to recover the tax. These back taxes were due from the 70s when Nelson was a hit musician. The IRS noted that Nelson did not pay his taxes from 1978 to 1982 totaling $6.5million in income tax. The balance $10.2 million accrued from penalties and interest.
Nelson has some loyal fans, since most of them purchased the auctioned properties and returned them to him. Which celebrity did not want to be Willie Nelson at this point, with fans such as these?

Celebrity Tax Evasion > Willie Nelson Tax Evasion