Nicolas Cage Selling Vegas Mansion to Cover Debt

Making bundles of cash doesn't guarantee you won't evade

(NEWSER) - Not too many of us are celebrating Tax Day, but some celebrities are probably even less happy about it than you. The Frisky rounds up 10 who owe back taxes:

• Pamela Anderson: Perhaps Dancing With the Stars will help her pay some of the $493,144 she owes California.
• Wesley Snipes: He actually went to prison after failing to file for a few years and racking up $2.7 million in debt. He was released on a $1 million bond.

Don't make the same mistakes as Nicolas Cage and Annie Leibovitz

(NEWSER) - Celebrities really are just like us: During these financially stressful times, they’re suffering, too. On Huffington Post, Manisha Thakor points out the takeaway from four high-profile meltdowns.

• NBA Player Antoine Walker: Squandered away his $110 million fortune by age 33. The lesson? If you have a variable income, don’t spend based on peak earnings—spend based on average earnings.

2010 figure soars $32M from year before

(NEWSER) - Some 98,000 federal workers owed $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes at the end of the 2010 fiscal year. While that's fewer employees than in 2009, the amount of cash owed climbed by $32 million, the Washington Post reports. Defense Department workers owed the most, with more than 30,000 employees—including 4,600 civilian employees—in the red by $265 million, while 2% of active duty troops and 2% of reservists owed $339 million. More»

He had to visit 10 banks to do it

(NEWSER) - The city of Hartford got its most annoying tax payment ever yesterday, when a man showed up with a hand truck full of more than 30,000 pennies. Brian Kiros was furious over his $301.76 tax bill: He’d moved to Vermont a year and a half earlier but had forgotten to return his Connecticut license plates, meaning taxes kept piling up. “I'm like, if they are going to bother me like this, I'm going to bother them,” he tells WFSB . More»

Wait, isn't he broke?

(NEWSER) - Oh, Nicolas Cage…when will you learn? Your castle-buying habit already got you in massive debt, so you go out and purchase a pyramid? The good news: It’s not an actual pyramid, just a 9-foot-tall tomb shaped like one…which he won’t use until he’s one day buried in it, TMZ reports. Still not the most prudent of ideas, perhaps, but maybe he can keep his collection of shrunken heads in it until he needs it. More»