Famed talk-show host and Wake Forest University professor Melissa Harris-Perry has been hit with a massive tax lien. According to the Winston-Salem Journal, the Internal Revenue Service has placed a tax lien on Harris-Perry and her husband, James Perry, for $70K in delinquent taxes.
In an email released on Wednesday, the couple stated they were unaware of the tax lien but knew about their debt. She said that she and Perry paid $21,721 of the debt when they filed their taxes on April 15.
The remaining debt, $48,581, covers a tax period ending Dec. 31, 2013, according to a notice filed in Forsyth County Hall of Justice earlier this month. As for the delay in paying off her debt, Harris-Perry said they had been trying to clear the debt, but cited a series of personal crises as the cause for paying off the debt a lot slower than expected. “We were aware that we would continue to need to work to pay off the 2013 debt,” she said in the email.
A well-known host of an MSNBC talk show, Harris-Perry returned to her alma mater, Wake Forest, last year as a Presidential Chair. She is also a faculty member in the school’s Department of Politics and International Affairs.
