Going After the Big Ones

The Internal Revenue Service likes to prosecute celebrities, partly because celebrities often have large financial liabilities and partly because the publicity attendant to skewering the famous helps to spread the warning to humbler citizens. Among the notables accused:

> Al Capone, the Caesar of the Chicago gangland, was never convicted of murder, robbery, kidnaping, extortion or even bootlegging. But Treasury agents nailed him for evading payment of $1.2 million in taxes from 1924 to 1929, and the mobster was sentenced to eleven years in federal prison in Atlanta.

> George M. Cohan, Broadway's premier showman and songwriter of the World War I era (Over There, The Yankee Doodle Boy), was accused of failing to document a claim of $55,000 in expenses. Cohan won a landmark court victory in 1930, when the judge ruled that his estimated expenses were reasonable for a man in his position. "The Cohan Rule" survived until Congress passed new rules on documentation in 1962.

> Joe Louis, heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949, frittered away most of his $4.6 million earnings, then was hit in 1956 for back taxes, penalties and interest totaling more than $1 million. The IRS was able to collect only a fraction of the amount before quietly abandoning the effort in 1965.

> Charlie Chaplin was in trouble with the IRS on and off for more than three decades. In 1959, while living in Switzerland, he finally closed the books by paying $425,000 to settle a claim of $700,000.

> Edmund Wilson, the distinguished literary critic, was so unimpressed by his own income (sometimes less than $2,000 per year) that he did not bother to file tax returns from 1946 to 1955; in 1958, he was ordered to pay $35,000 in back taxes and $34,000 in penalties and interest. After Wilson and the IRS settled on $30,000, he achieved literary revenge of a sort by writing an indignant jeremiad: The Cold War and the Income Tax: A Protest.

> Philippe of the Waldorf (real name: Claudius Philippe), haughty arbiter of who sat where in one of New York City's fanciest hotel dining rooms, was charged with evading $25,000 worth of taxes on tips and kickbacks: one of the first such prosecutions by the IRS. He paid a fine of $10,000.

> Norman Mailer, bestselling novelist and social critic, was charged with owing $80,000 in taxes and penalties for 1976 and 1977. When he could not pay, the IRS seized his house in Provincetown, Mass., which was valued at $135,000, and auctioned it off for $65,000.

> Spiro Agnew, the nation's 39th Vice President, pleaded no contest in 1973 to charges of evading $13,551 in taxes due on $29,500 that he received from influence-seekers while Governor of Maryland. Agnew paid $10,000 in fines and resigned, the only U.S. Vice President ever to do so while under criminal investigation.

> Billy Carter, the good-ole-boy brother of Jimmy Carter, was charged with failing to pay $105,000 in 1978. The IRS seized and sold his home and service station in Plains, Ga.

> The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Korean evangelist and founder of the Unification Church, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined $25,000 in 1982 for failing to report personal income of $162,000. Still free while appealing, Moon claims the money belonged to the church and was thus exempt from taxes. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.