Lauryn Hill is currently serving a three-month sentence in a federal prison for evading Taxes on her 2005-2007 income of $1.8 million. While Lauryn certainly had some colorful excuses to say the least on why she hadn’t been paying her taxes, the judge and the IRS weren’t hearing it. Despite the singer paying up the taxes at the last hour with six children at home, she was sentenced with the prison time, three months in home confinement, one-year probation, and a $60,000 fine.

For someone that proclaims to be highly conscious of the system she lives in, Ms. Hill should know better than anyone else what the rules are. Unless you’re a sovereign, you are living in a system with rules that must be complied with. Are the laws fair? They most certainly are not.

Ms. Hill claims that her money has amassed over $600,000,000 for the higher-ups, in which she only received a mere sliver. You can bet these higher ups legally evaded taxes on that $600,000,000 too. In addition to observing the amount of money pocketed, Ms. Hill should have been doing the following: 1) Taking notes on how to properly lose the paper trail and/ or write off taxes the way the upper echelon does so 2) Keeping records and whistle blowing to the IRS just in case the gains from the higher ups were improperly reported.

Don’t Expect Privilege

Once again, unless you’re a business owner, this is what the 99% faces on a daily basis. Ms. Hill seems to be a bit delusional in thinking that as a musician that she was warranted special status. Not sure what the tax structure is for musicians, but it sounds like the majority are employed with a 1099 status. That means less protection and more responsibility. As an employee, your work will produce profits for your employer. If this wasn’t ok with Lauryn, she should have never joined the music industry under major labels in the first place. However, Ms. Hill understood how to pay taxes up until 2005. Why the disconnect after that baffles us.

Nonetheless, Lauryn had much more resources than the average person. She could have hired an excellent accountant and received advice from other wealthy friends on properly paying little to no taxes. Flat out refusing to pay never works out well for anyone. Just ask Wesley Snipes. Do we need to be tossing people in the slammer for missing taxes when we have reckless murderers walking the street? Don’t think so, but we live in a country where money has always mattered over humanity. It’s a better and safer game to learn how to give just the amount needed of you and not a penny more. Hopefully this was a lesson learned, and the proclamation of the “Mis-Education of Lauryn Hill” is no longer.