Looks like His Royal Purple Badness has been bad indeed. And Uncle Sam is prepared to spank him.
Prince made the published list of delinquent taxpayers for Carver County in Minneapolis, which shows the musician owing in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to state and other government agencies, several media outlets report.
In a separate case, The Associated Press reports that a judge in Ireland ordered Prince to pay $2.97 million to an Irish concert promoter for canceling a concert at the last minute without providing any explanation. High Court Justice Peter Kelly said Prince is in breach of a contract with MCD Productions Ltd., which had the diminutive singer scheduled to play in the 82,000-seat Croke Park in June 2008. But Prince, 51, withdrew from the gig days in advance without consulting the promoters with more than 55,000 tickets sold.
That ruling may hurt Prince as much as the tax issue and threats of forfeitures. Yahoo.com and the Chaska Herald of greater Minneapolis says the county taxpayer services manager estimates that Prince’s PRN Music Corporation owes more than $227,000 for 2009 taxes to the state and other government agencies.
It gets worse. The county taxpayer manager goes on to say that with all of Prince’s property holdings combined, which includes Paisley Park Studios and other real estate properties, Princes owes more than $450,000 in taxes. The publications state that if Prince Rogers Nelson, the name listed as the owner of the properties, doesn’t pay up before the April 21 deadline or file a written objection, Prince could face forfeiture of the properties. Prince has owned some of these, of course, since the peak of his musical prowess in the mid-1980s.
The delinquency list was published in the Chaska Herald. Efforts to reach Prince or his representatives at PRN through phone calls and e-mails were not returned. –terry shropshire
