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Rev. Al Sharpton Busted for $596K In Unpaid Taxes

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Every for-profit enterprise created by Al Sharpton has been shut down in at least one jurisdiction for failure to pay taxes.

According to tax warrants, Sharpton currently owes the state of New York almost $596,000 for all the businesses he failed to make annual payments on. In addition, after one business would fail he would open up another one to replace it.

“He clearly appears — based on the information that’s available to us — to have a history of noncompliance with tax obligations,” says Bernadette Schopfer, the director of taxation at New York’s Maier Markey & Justic, a certified public-accounting firm that has had no dealings with Sharpton or National Action Network. “It appears that [Sharpton] does not file [taxes for his businesses], and then opens up something else. At all the entities we see he has opened up, he has not been compliant with the obligations of the owner of a business. . . . He’s either willful in his behavior, or he’s just sloppy.”

Sharpton’s first for-profit company, Raw Talent, was incorporated as a for-profit entity in 1991, the same year Sharpton founded National Action Network.

Raw Talent owes $580,453 in federal taxes and $4,834 in New York State Taxes. The company was eliminated in 2002 for failure to pay taxes, following the opening of Revals Communications in 1999.

Revals Communications also showed discrepancies from the beginning. The company shared the same address as Raw Talent and immediately ran into tax problems when Sharpton didn’t bother to pay taxes from 1999 to 2002.

The tax debt started off at $10,585 in total for the first three years. But in 2002, the same year Raw Talent was closed, Revals Communications’ unpaid balance swelled to $215,606.

Meanwhile, a 2007 New York tax warrant shows Revals Communications also owed the state $175,962. New York finally dissolved the company in 2009, according to the National Review.

Soon after he opened up Sharpton Media Group in Delaware, a state where corporations don’t have to disclose as much information. Sharpton then registered the company in New York as a foreign limited-liability company in July 2004, three months after it opened in Delaware.

In 2007, Delaware dissolved it for failure to file tax records. At the time, an entity report from Delaware says, Sharpton Media Group owed $7,001 in taxes. But records shows it remains active in New York.

A representative from the New York Division of Corporations tells NRO in an e-mail that state law “provides that when an authorized foreign corporation . . . has been dissolved, merged out of existence, or had its authority to conduct its business terminated or canceled in its jurisdiction of incorporation, it must file a Certificate of Termination of Existence with the New York State Department of State.” According to state records, Sharpton had made no such filing.

In 2005, after opening up Sharpton Media Group the reverend also added Bo Spanky to the company. Which again Sharpton failed to pay the taxes and was closed in 2012.

On National Action Network’s latest tax filing, from 2013, loans from Bo Spanky and Sharpton Media Group disappear, apparently replaced by a loan directly from the reverend himself, with a balance due to Sharpton of $328,881.

Frank Mercado-Valdes, who used to advise Sharpton on business matters, says that despite the reverend’s brilliance as a political strategist, he has always harbored deep suspicions about business and isn’t savvy about money.

“Carelessness was his hallmark,” Mercado-Valdes was quoted as saying. “Was it worse than that? Carelessness, yes. Complete disregard for the little laws? Yes, some powerful people are like that. . . . [Sharpton] was someone who, because of the nature of his organization, just between his nonprofit and his for-profits and his personal life, just had a very ad-hoc approach to organization.”

This hasn’t been the only time Sharpton has broke the law. In 1990, a jury found him not guilty of 67 counts of fraud and larceny, but just three years later he plead guilty to a misdemeanor tax charge.

The reverend’s financial woes and big-spending lifestyle may be catching up to him, says Carl Redding, a former Sharpton aide who has since publicly criticizedthe reverend.

“What he’s doing is negligent,” Redding says, adding that he can’t fathom why, after all of Sharpton’s past tax troubles, the reverend continues to make the same financial mistakes.

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Redding says. “I believe that Sharpton has become so powerful it’s diluting everything about him. The African-American community doesn’t trust Sharpton anymore. He’s living in a fantasy world if he thinks he has credibility.”

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The post Rev. Al Sharpton Busted for $596K In Unpaid Taxes appeared first on JP Updates.


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