Lauryn Hill Responds to Tax-Evasion Charges, Says She'll Rectify Situation

Fugees singer maintains she only stopped paying when it became "necessary to withdraw from society" due to various dangers

Ready or not, here's Lauryn Hill's explanation for why she didn't pay her taxes.

The Fugees singer, charged this week in New Jersey with failing to file federal income taxes on more than $1.5 million in earnings between 2005 and 2007, gave a lengthy treatise via her Tumblr on why she snubbed Uncle Sam for a few years.

Hill wrote that she always paid her taxes until it became "necessary to withdraw from society, in order to guarantee the safety and well-being of [herself and her] family."

So, what was threatening the mother of six to the point of her going "underground"?

Hill spent the last several years "underground," she wrote, "in order to build a community of people, like-minded in their desire for freedom and the right to pursue their goals and lives without being manipulated and controlled by a media protected military industrial complex with a completely different agenda.

"Having put the lives and needs of other people before my own for multiple years," she continued, "and having made hundreds of millions of dollars for certain institutions, under complex and sometimes severe circumstances, I began to require growth and more equitable treatment, but was met with resistance."

The Sister Act 2 star says she left her "more mainstream and public life" in order to remover herself and her family "from a lifestyle that required distortion and compromise as a means for maintaining it."

Compromise, such as giving the government a portion of her income?

"I conveyed all of this"—this apparently being her rejection of a consumerist society where "veiled racism, sexism, ageism, nepotism, and deliberate economic control are still blatant realities"—"when questioned as to why I did not file taxes during this time period," Hill continued.

"Obviously, the danger I faced was not accepted as reasonable grounds for deferring my tax payments, as authorities, who despite being told all of this, still chose to pursue action against me, as opposed to finding an alternative solution."

"My intention has always been to get this situation rectified," she wrote. "When I was working consistently without being affected by the interferences mentioned above, I filed and paid my taxes. As this, and other areas of issue are resolved and set straight, I am able to get back to doing what I should be doing, the way it should be done."

We bet the IRS will appreciate it just as much as her fans will.