Wesley Snipes famously served time in prison for his failure to file taxes. Meanwhile, Donald Trump evaded taxes as well and eventually became the President of the United States of America.
The actor served two and a half years and was released in 2013. According to The New York Times, Trump only paid $750 in taxes in 2016, which was also the year he ran for President.
Although the POTUS didn’t pay taxes in ten of the past fifteen years, he’s not getting charged for any tax-related crimes. Meanwhile, Wesley was sentenced to three years for misdemeanor convictions.
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“Well, that’s an easy answer. He’s the president of the United States,” Snipes told the Guardian. “But he got away with it when he wasn’t president. This is not rocket science. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
The 58-year-old maintains that his punishment was unfair. “The law says you pay for people who are experts to manage your business affairs, yet I was included as a co-conspirator with the lawyer and the accountants. Now this is rare. Very unusual situation.”
The Blade actor did take some accountability for the decisions he made. “I made decisions. I accept the ramifications of those decisions. No one forced me to take that person as my accountant; no one forced me to take that person as my lawyer. No one forced me to believe what they were saying. That was on me. I don’t have time to sit back and say I was wronged and recapture all that was lost,” he said.
Snipes says he spent most of his time in isolation doing meditation. “I hope I came out a better person,” he said. “I came out a clearer person. Clearer on my values, clearer on my purpose, clearer about my relationship with my ancestors and the great god and the great goddess above, and clearer on what I was going to do once I had my freedom back.”
Wesley Snipes recently starred in Eddie Murphy’s Dolemite Is My Name on Netflix, and the project was received fairly well. Would you like to see him in more movies?