The attorney general of the District of Columbia has sued Microstrategy’s co-founder and executive chairman, Michael Saylor, for tax fraud. The lawsuit also names Microstrategy as a defendant “alleging that it conspired to help him evade taxes he legally owes.” Both Saylor and Microstrategy denied the allegations. The attorney general is seeking more than $100 million in unpaid taxes and penalties.
District of Columbia Sues Billionaire Michael Saylor and Microstrategy
The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) of the District of Columbia announced Wednesday that Attorney General Karl A. Racine has filed “a tax fraud lawsuit” against Microstrategy’s co-founder and executive chairman, Michael J. Saylor. The lawsuit also names the Nasdaq-listed software company as a defendant “alleging that it conspired to help him evade taxes he legally owes.”
The announcement claims that Saylor has resided in the District of Columbia for more than a decade but has never paid any D.C. income taxes despite earning hundreds of millions of dollars.
This is the first lawsuit brought under the District’s recently passed False Claims Act that encourages whistleblowers to report information about D.C. residents evading the District’s tax laws by misrepresenting their residences, the announcement explains.
Whistleblowers filed a lawsuit against Saylor in April last year, alleging that the billionaire bitcoin bull had defrauded the District and failed to pay income taxes he legally owed from 2014 through 2020. The OAG notice adds that after independently investigating the tax fraud allegations against Saylor, the attorney general office intervened in the whistleblower lawsuit and filed its own complaint against both Saylor and his software company.
According to the D.C. attorney general:
The suit alleges that Saylor engaged in an elaborate scheme to create the illusion that he lived in Florida, a state without personal income tax, while he actually resided in the District.
Attorney General Racine further detailed that Saylor has publicly called the District’s Georgetown neighborhood home since about 2005, noting that the Microstrategy founder lives in a 7,000-square-foot penthouse on the Georgetown waterfront and has docked at least two of his luxury yachts in the District for long periods of time.
The District’s lawsuit alleges that Saylor avoided paying more than $25 million in D.C. income taxes by claiming to be a Florida or Virginia resident,…
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