Wesley, ya gotta pay Uncle Sam!

Wesley Snipes has been indicted on federal criminal charges for his role in a tax avoidance scheme that allegedly included him seeking $12 million in fraudulent refunds and failing to file six years of tax returns. In an eight-count indictment unsealed today, Snipes and two others are charged with knowingly attempting to defraud the government by claiming that his substantial income was somehow immune to taxation. According to the indictment, Snipes, 44, conspired with Eddie Ray Kahn and former certified public accountant Douglas Rosile in the tax scam. Kahn is the founder of a Florida company (now known as Guiding Light of God Ministries) that, investigators allege, "promoted and sold fraudulent tax schemes" to clients like Snipes. Kahn has claimed that U.S. citizens could only be taxed on income earned from certain foreign-based activities (and not on money made in this country).

As part of the alleged Snipes scheme, the actor filed amended tax returns seeking $12 million in refunds on taxes he paid in 1996 and 1997. Details of the Snipes tax gambit first surfaced in 2002, when the Department of Justice sought a restraining order against Rosile. As an exhibit to that filing, investigators included a copy of Snipes's amended 1997 tax return, which Rosile prepared. That document, which you can review here, sought a $7.3 million refund of previously paid taxes (Snipes earned $19.2 million in 1997). The amended return contended that the star's income was "not from a taxable source" and contained a slightly tweaked affirmation next to the form's signature line.

The Smoking Gun