Al Sharpton isn't the only MSNBC host who has a problem with paying taxes. Michael Hewlett of North Carolina's Winston-Salem Journal reported on Wednesday that Melissa Harris-Perry and her husband owe "about $70,000 in delinquent taxes, according to a notice filed in Forsyth County Hall of Justice earlier this month." The IRS placed a tax lien on the couple as a result.
Hewlett reported in his article, "IRS files $70K tax lien against Harris-Perry, husband," that Harris-Perry, who joined the faculty of Wake Forest University in the summer of 2014, replied to his inquiries about the lien via e-mail: "She [Harris-Perry] said she and her husband paid $21,721 of the debt when they filed their taxes Wednesday. The remaining debt, $48,581, covers a tax period ending Dec. 31, 2013, according to the notice."
The reporter also noted that the MSNBC personality "said she and her husband had been working to pay off the debt but had to deal with a series of personal crises that caused the couple to pay off the debt a lot slower than expected." He later added that "Harris-Perry said the couple had an official payment plan with the IRS."
Harris-Perry has been a host at MSNBC since February 2012. Earlier in 2015, she endorsed a panelist's idea to encourage Starbucks employees to write that "white supremacy has been the organizing principle of America since it was founded" on customers' cups. Harris-Perry also worried that American tourists would become a "plague" on Cuba if full diplomatic relations are restored with the communist island country, and asserted that abortion is a "core fundamental skill" for medical students.
