{"id":2347,"date":"2024-08-22T15:22:11","date_gmt":"2024-08-22T15:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/new-york-says-he-owes-8-7m-in-taxes\/"},"modified":"2024-08-22T15:22:11","modified_gmt":"2024-08-22T15:22:11","slug":"new-york-says-he-owes-8-7m-in-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/new-york-says-he-owes-8-7m-in-taxes\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Says He Owes $8.7M In Taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tJust a week before a court-ordered auction of Damon Dash<\/strong>\u2019s one-third stake in Jay-Z<\/a>\u2019s Roc-A-Fella Records, there\u2019s a stunning new wrinkle: New York State says he owes more than $8.7 million in unpaid taxes and that the Roc-A-Fella proceeds must be used to pay down the huge debt.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a motion filed Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, New York\u2019s Department of Taxation & Finance asked to legally intervene in the proceedings ahead of the Aug. 29 auction, in which the United States Marshals Service will auction off Dash\u2019s 33.3% interest in the storied record company.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe tax authorities claim that Dash owes more than $8.7 million in unpaid taxes and penalties from personal income he reported from 2005 and 2018 \u2013 and that the Roc-A-Fella auction might be their last shot at recouping a debt that has been \u201cdelinquent for far too long.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTo date, the Department has been unsuccessful in its efforts to collect the unpaid New York State tax debt owed by Dash,\u201d attorneys for the state wrote. \u201cIntervening in this matter may be the Department\u2019s only opportunity to collect some of the unpaid taxes Dash owes to New York.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new wrinkle is sure to complicate an already-complex situation. The Roc-A-Fella auction is being held to satisfy an $823,000 judgment against Dash, won by movie producer Josh Webber<\/strong> in a civil lawsuit over a failed film partnership. But New York City\u2019s Department of Social Services will actually have first dibs, since Dash also owes a total of $145,096 in unpaid child support.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn their filing on Wednesday, the tax department stressed that it does not seek to jump ahead of child services in pecking order for auction proceeds. But it offered no such promise to Webber \u2013 and pointedly noted that it had secured a lien against the Roc-A-Fella proceeds more a decade earlier than he had.<\/p>\n

\n\tSet to take place next week at a Manhattan hotel, the Roc-A-Fella auction will have a minimum bid of $1.2 million. The sale will be for Dash\u2019s stake in Roc-A-Fella Inc., an entity whose primary asset is Jay-Z\u2019s iconic debut album Reasonable Doubt<\/em>. The rest of the catalog of music released by Roc-A-Fella, which dissolved in 2013, is owned by other entities and isn\u2019t involved.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe owners of the other two-thirds of Roc-A-Fella \u2014 label cofounders Jay-Z (Shawn Carter<\/strong>) and Kareem \u201cBiggs\u201d Burke<\/strong> \u2014 have already attempted to stop the auction, including making changes to the company\u2019s bylaws and intervening in the lawsuit. But a federal judge rejected such opposition in February.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe auction will be coordinated by Webber\u2019s attorney, Chris Brown<\/strong>, who told Billboard <\/em>earlier this month that he had received numerous inquiries from potential bidders, including corporate investors, high-profile individuals and collectors. Brown not immediately return a request for comment Thursday on the Department of Taxation & Finance\u2019s request to access the proceeds.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough the auction\u2019s minimum bid has been set at $1.2 million, it\u2019s entirely unclear how much a potential buyer is going to be willing to spend on Dash\u2019s one-third stake.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe royalties from Reasonable Doubt<\/em> would likely provide them a revenue stream; since its 1996 release, Reasonable Doubt<\/em> has racked up 2.2 million equivalent album units in the U.S., according to Luminate, including 21,500 units so far this year. But the eventual buyer also would be a minority owner in a company controlled by hostile partners, with little ability to perform typical due diligence on the asset they\u2019re about to purchase. And Roc-A-Fella\u2019s rights to Reasonable Doubt<\/em> could potentially expire in 2031, thanks to copyright law\u2019s termination right.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf any money from the auction is left over, it will go to Dash himself. In a statement to Billboard <\/em>last month, his attorney Natraj Bhushan<\/strong> said that he and his client would be at the Aug. 29 event and \u201cexpect a robust auction with bids entering the several millions if not higher.\u201d Bhushan did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday on the Department of Taxation & Finance\u2019s request to access the proceeds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just a week before a court-ordered auction of Damon Dash\u2019s one-third stake in Jay-Z\u2019s Roc-A-Fella Records, there\u2019s a stunning new wrinkle: New York State says he owes more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3105,885,3106,326],"class_list":["post-2347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-8-7m","tag-owes","tag-taxes","tag-york"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}