Music mogul Damon Dash is in serious debt with the IRS, owing them nearly $3 million in back taxes, according to reports. In a recent interview on the Shade 45 radio show “Sway In The Morning,” Dash spoke candidly about his massive debt, according to MTV News.
“I owe way more than $2 million in taxes. That must’ve just been the IRS,” Dash said to host Sway Calloway, laughing, explaining that he was “oblivious” to his debt before giving a sobering summary of his current financial bind. “Nah, nah, I’m f—-d up.”
Dash previously worked alongside fellow Roc-A-Fella Records co-founders, hip-hop mogul Jay-Z and Kareem “Biggs” Burke, building a massively successful hip-hop empire before the Blueprint emcee cut ties with Dash and Burke in 2005 and went on to start his own Roc Nation empire.
Since the falling out, Dash has started new business ventures, including his New York City studio and art gallery DD172. Ironically, according to Dash, his many business ventures are the very things that are holding him up from paying off his gargantuan debt, explaining that he redistributes his money back into his business in lieu of making an initial profit.
“It’s the price of business; it is what it is,” Dash explained. “I owe taxes: I got to pay.”
“They’re auditing me. When you’re a businessman, you have a lot of businesses, a lot of times they think you’re laundering money or you’re pretending you’re writing things off that you don’t. I’m a true businessman. As you know, I believe in my independence, I have no partners, so every dollar I make goes right back into every business I have,” said Dash.
According to Dash, his debt woes are the result of his accountant’s negligence in properly itemizing his expenses.
“If I have an accountant that just reports I just invested $10 million in my business and he doesn’t exactly itemize where every cost goes, it gives a flag to the government,” he said. “They want to make sure that the reason I’m not paying taxes is because I’m reinvesting in these businesses and not trying to hide stuff.”
Now, Dash says that it’s just a waiting game to what the government concludes from investigating his financial books.
“They gotta look at every single transaction, and the government is slow,” he said. “They really don’t believe that I’m so real about putting all of my money into my business, but that’s what I do.” –nicholas robinson
