Mary J. Blige is opening up about recent financial woes she faced with the IRS at the height of her career.
During the 2023 annual Strength of a Woman festival in Atlanta last weekend, the Not Gon’ Cry star admitted that she “owed hundreds of millions of dollars” in unpaid taxes.
“I owed so much money I never thought I’d ever get out of debt,” the iconic R&B crooner revealed.
Ten years ago, reports surfaced that the 52-year-old Yonkers native owed $3.4 million in unpaid taxes in a three-year period, according to The Huffington Post. She had also defaulted on two loans totaling $2.7 million.
Then in 2019, it was reported that the IRS filed a tax lien against the star, citing she owed the federal government $1,198,161 in back taxes.
“I’m out of debt now,” Blige said at the festival. “Now I have the wisdom, now I look at my payroll… that’s not my money. My taxes are not my money, so I’m like, ‘Pay my payroll, pay my taxes, pay my tithes.’ All of that money, I don’t even wanna see it because it doesn’t belong to me.”
The Real Love singer then went on to state that a large part of her financial distress stemmed from her divorce from her ex-husband and manager Martin “Kendu” Isaacs.
“He was in control of everything,” she said.
The pair married in 2003 and split in 2018.
In a recent The Breakfast Club interview, Blige went into detail about the divorce and how it impacted her finances.
“By the time I got to the deposition and saw everything that he did, I didn’t have a dollar left,” she said. “He spent everything, and he knew he spent everything but he was still asking me for more money.”
She added: “I had to give up all this alimony, and I didn’t have no more money to give because he had spent it all,” she said. “I had to go on tour and make all the money back to pay the alimony.”
