Lauryn Hill sentenced to three months in prison for tax evasion

Lauryn Hill has avoided going to jail for three years. Instead, she has been sentenced to just three months for tax evasion.

Hill was arrested last year on tax evasion charges for failing to pay federal income taxes in 2005, 2006 and 2007, during a time when she earned an estimated $1.8 million. She also didn’t pay federal and state income taxes in 2008 and 2009 on total earnings of $2.3 million. She pleaded guilty to the charges and could have faced up to three years in prison for three charges.

On Sunday, before the hearing, Hill’s attorney said that she paid back $900,000 as required, but prosecutors claim that she still owes interest and penalties, reports The Associated Press.

Hill did speak at Monday’s hearing with a long, strongly worded statement that included occasional raps. “I am a child of former slaves who had a system imposed on them,” she told U.S. Magistrate Madeline Cox Arleo. “I had an economic system imposed on me.”

She spoke about how she had disappeared from the music industry since releasing The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1998 in an effort to protect her six children and herself. “There were veiled threats, there was blacklisting...I was told, 'That's how it goes, it comes with the territory.' I came to be perceived as a cash cow and not a person. When people capitalize on a persona, they forget there is a person in there,” she said.

The former Fugees singer will also have to pay a $60,000 fine in addition to three months in prison. She will also be on parole for a year after her jail sentence and the first three months of that year will be spent in home confinement. She has to report to prison on June 8.

Hill’s sentence comes after she confirmed that she did sign a new contract with Sony and after the release of a new single.

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