Wesley Snipes: Tax Avenger

Wesley Snipes would do well to learn a cardinal rule in any court proceeding: Anytime your lawyers use words like 'kooky,' 'crazy,' or 'loony' in your defense, it doesn't bode well.  

A jury in Ocala, Florida deliberates  on the fate of Wesley Snipes: actor, film producer and tax protester. Tax protestors argue that the Sixteenth Amendment was never ratified and does not require taxing of some kinds of personal income. Snipes didn't pay taxes from 1999 to 2004, and owes Ceaser his due on the over $58 million he made during that time. He faces up to 16 years if convicted, but I doubt he'll go to pokey. Chances are good that Snipes will avoid a jail-term, and settle on a payment schedule to correct his arrears. But I don't know what he's gonna do for work. Because while he's still in the game, he hasn't had a hit movie in years, and has alienated a good portion of the film business. So he runs the risk of having his possessions sold off Redd Foxx-stylee(sic)   and ending up playing Kunta Kinte in a Las Vegas floor-show revival of "Roots," or maybe the lead in the next Tyler Perry film. But he has to give the government their due. Anything less will embolden the movement, such that it is.

Snipes certainly changes the profile of the tax-protestor we have come to know, the rabid hillbilly barricaded in his log cabin taking potshots at federal agents to protect his 'freedoms.'

Up to this point, we thought black folks just instinctively knew to avoid this kind of thing, like with bungee jumping or Wayne Brady. There's been talk that Snipes will encourage more people of color to become tax protestors,  but this doesn't give black people any credit. Wesley's ironic grace is that he has the kind of bread to fight a case like this: Angry Leroi LuMumba, working at the local vacuum company?

Not so much.

Jimi Izrael is a writer and commentator living in Tallahassee, Florida.