{"id":313442,"date":"2025-11-25T20:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T20:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/313442\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T20:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T20:48:09","slug":"republican-jim-justice-to-pay-5m-in-back-taxes-following-government-lawsuit-us-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/313442\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican Jim Justice to pay $5m in back taxes following government lawsuit | US Senate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim Justice<\/a>, the Republican US senator, and his wife have agreed to pay more than $5m that the couple owes in back taxes shortly after being sued over the 16-year-old debt by the federal government.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit, filed on Monday in federal court in their home state of West Virginia<\/a>, maintained that the Justices had received notice from the US treasury department of the funds due since 2009 but had \u201cneglected or refused to make full payment of those assessments\u201d.<\/p>\n

The suit demanded that Jim and Cathy Justice \u2013 a member of West Virginia\u2019s state board of education \u2013 pay back the balance of nearly $5.2m along with any other relief that the court deemed \u201cjust and proper\u201d.<\/p>\n

A separate filing later on Monday said the US justice department had struck a settlement with the political couple, who agreed to satisfy the full amount \u201cplus statutory interest and other additions to tax accruing thereafter\u201d. The agreement was pending a judge\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n

Justice\u2019s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment early on Tuesday. He had previously sought to dismiss as political attacks attempts to collect on financial debts for which he was on the hook.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s lawsuit against Justice \u2013 a coalmining heir \u2013 and his wife came after the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in October filed more than $8m in liens against the Justices over unpaid personal taxes.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, West Virginia tax collectors placed a $1.4m lien on the luxurious Greenbrier hotel resort that their family owns and operates in White Sulphur Springs, a community in the Alleghany Mountains.<\/p>\n

The Justice family only narrowly avoided foreclosure for the Greenbrier by reaching an agreement with a credit collection company in August 2024. They bought the 246-year-old property \u2013 whose guests have included US presidents from Martin van Buren<\/a> to Donald Trump<\/a> \u2013 out of bankruptcy in 2009 for $20.1m.<\/p>\n

Jim Justice, who is also the owner of various other businesses, was once considered to be West Virginia\u2019s wealthiest resident. But more than $1bn of collective debt has resulted in his having a projected net worth of \u201cless than zero\u201d, according to a Forbes report<\/a> from January.<\/p>\n

Despite his financial troubles, Jim Justice served as West Virginia\u2019s governor for eight years beginning in 2017. He then won election to the US Senate<\/a>, taking over a seat vacated by the retirement of his fellow West Virginia coal tycoon Joe Manchin, a Democrat.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

Our US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

Speaking with local media in October, Justice claimed that there were political motives behind the collection efforts against him, the Associated Press reported<\/a>. He argued at the time that his businesses \u201care complicated and complex\u201d \u2013 and that his children had been \u201cdoing a magnificent job\u201d running them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, I\u2019d say just let it be and see how it plays out,\u201d Justice said, according to the AP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jim Justice, the Republican US senator, and his wife have agreed to pay more than $5m that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-313442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}