Snipes to be sentenced tomorrow in Ocala

The U.S. Attorney's Office says it spent more than $250,000 to prosecute actor Wesley Snipes for failure to file his tax returns.

When Snipes is sentenced in Ocala tommorow for the misdemeanor convictions, prosecutors want a federal judge to order that he pay it back. Prosecutors also want the Orlando native to pay a fine of at least $5-million.

Snipes, 45, is facing as much as three years in prison after a jury convicted him in February on three of six misdemeanor charges of failing to file his taxes. He was acquitted on felony counts of conspiracy and filing a false claim with the Internal Revenue Service.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Tampa announced the charges against Snipes in October 2006. Prosecutors accused him and co-defendants Eddie Ray Kahn and Douglas P. Rosile of conspiring to defraud the IRS of about $11.4-million in refunds on taxes Snipes paid in 1996 and 1997.

Jurors convicted Kahn and Rosile of conspiracy and filing a false claim.

Snipes hired Kahn, a Lake County resident, in 2000 as a tax consultant. Rosile, a de-licensed Venice accountant, worked part-time for Kahn and prepared an amended return for Snipes. Kahn is facing 10 years in prison and Rosile is facing more than eight years.

The IRS estimated that Snipes failed to report nearly $38-million in gross income from 1999 to 2004. The IRS calculated Snipes' unpaid tax liability for those years as more than $15.6-million.

Snipes' attorneys said at trial that he tried repeatedly to meet with IRS officials because he had questions about his taxes.

Kahn, a tax protester, told Snipes that Internal Revenue Code Section 861 excused Americans from paying taxes on income earned in the United States. Courts have rejected the theory.

In court records asking for the maximum sentence for Snipes, prosecutors say his celebrity status doesn't warrant leniency.

"To the extent that Snipes' background is even a mitigating factor, it is offset by his nearly decade-long effort to escape paying taxes on the lucrative compensation he received as result of that professional success," prosecutors wrote in a court filing. "To the extent that Snips has, in the past, performed charity and good works, such actions should be viewed in the context of what is typical and expected of individuals who have reached defendant's station in life."

Senior U.S. District Judge William Terrell Hodges has set the sentencing for Snipes, Kahn and Rosile to begin Thursday at 9:30 a.m.

-Kevin Graham, Times staff writer