Aretha Franklin estate owes millions in back taxes, IRS claims
An attorney says Franklin's estate has paid at least $3m in back taxes to the IRS since her death in August
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Your support makes all the difference.Aretha Franklin's estate owes millions in back taxes, the Internal Revenue Service has claimed.
Documents obtained by TMZ show that the IRS say the singer, who died in August, owes more than $6.3m in taxes from 2012 to 2018 and $1.5m in penalties.
Franklin's estate is being audited by the IRS, which filed a claim this month, attorney David Bennett said. The estate has paid at least $3m in back taxes to the IRS since her death, according to Bennett.
"We have a tax attorney. All of her returns have been filed," Bennett told the Associated Press.
"We have disputes with the IRS regarding what they claim was income. We claim its double-dipping income because they don't understand how the business works."
He added that Franklin had a lot of expenses whenever she toured.
"She had to pay for transportation, hotel rooms, backup singers, musicians. When she did that the IRS was questioning the returns she filed," Bennett said.
"We're going through audits. Returns were filed as timely as we could get them filed."
Franklin died of pancreatic cancer in August in her apartment in Detroit, Michigan. She was 76.
At the time of her death, Franklin owned a home in Oakland County's Bloomfield Township. The IRS filed the claim this month in Oakland County Probate Court in Pontiac.
Documents filed in an Oakland County court after Franklin's death did not mention the value of her estate, which could run into the tens of millions.
Franklin's estate also has paid money to the state of Michigan and other jurisdictions "where she would have had some income", Bennett said.
The singer had been the target of a number of lawsuits by creditors during the late 1980s and 1990s.
In 2008, the singer said an attorney's mistake caused her $700,000 mansion in Detroit to slip into foreclosure over $445 in 2005 taxes and late fees. The Detroit Free Press reported then that Franklin owed a total of $19,192 in back taxes on the property through 2007.
Additional reporting by AP.
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