Senator agrees to pay over $5 million in back taxes to IRS

HAIYUN JIANG/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) leaves the Senate chamber during a “vote-a-rama” to pass President Donald Trump’s domestic policy bill on Capitol Hill in Washington, on June 30. Justice and his wife have agreed to pay the Internal Revenue Service more than $5 million to cover unpaid taxes from 2009, settling part of a legal fight he has claimed is politically motivated.

WASHINGTON >> Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., and his wife have agreed to pay the Internal Revenue Service more than $5 million to cover unpaid taxes from 2009, settling part of a legal fight he has claimed is politically motivated.

The agreement, filed in federal court Monday, came just hours after the IRS sued Justice and his wife, Cathy, accusing them of having “neglected or refused to make full payment” of their taxes for 2009. In the lawsuit, the IRS said that as of early August, the Justices owed over $5.16 million in back taxes and interest from that year.

Under the settlement, the Justices have agreed to pay that amount, plus any additional interest they accrue before the bill is paid in full. The filing, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, did not give a deadline or schedule for payment. The agreement, known as a consent judgment, was still awaiting a judge’s signature Tuesday morning.

A spokesperson for Justice’s Senate office did not respond to a request for comment.

Last month, Justice asserted during a news conference that the 2009 tax assessment against him and his wife, which was levied in 2015, and other assessments since then, were politically motivated. “If you don’t think these are political moves, you’re crazy,” he told reporters. He suggested that President Joe Biden’s administration might have targeted him during his 2024 run for the Senate, but did not offer specifics.

A spokesperson for Biden declined to comment on Justice’s claims. Biden was president when the IRS issued more recent tax assessments against the Justices, but he was the vice president in 2015, when the initial assessment for missed 2009 taxes was issued. He had left the White House by the time the IRS filed tax lien notices against the Justices earlier this year for being in arrears in multiple tax years.

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In 2009, Justice was a private citizen with holdings in the coal industry. He did not explain why he believed he would have been a target of tax officials in the Obama administration. In 2015, he began a successful campaign to become West Virginia’s governor as a Democrat, six months before the IRS assessed that he owed back taxes for 2009. Four years later, after building an alliance with President Donald Trump, Justice ran for reelection — and won — as a Republican.

Justice also said that he was pursuing the IRS for what he claimed, without providing evidence, were about $40 million in outstanding tax refunds. He predicted that he and his spouse would ultimately “end up with significantly more dollars from the IRS than what we owe the IRS.” He added: “It’s just a situation we’ve got to go through.”

Justice, who served as governor from 2017 until he took office as a senator in January, got into politics after a long career running a family coal business that owned dozens of mines in several states.

It was not immediately clear why the government reassessed the Justices’ tax liability for 2009.

That year, Justice sold one of his coal companies, Bluestone Coal, to Mechel, a Russian coal and steel producer, for $436 million in cash plus shares, and he has suggested the deal he triggered an IRS audit. (He bought back Bluestone six years later.) Also in 2009, Justice bought a luxury resort in West Virginia, the Greenbrier, out of bankruptcy. The resort was known for hosting retreats for Republican lawmakers.

Tax and debt issues have dogged Justice in recent years. He and his companies have been accused of dodging a number of bills from banks and other creditors. Banks tried to garnish his wages as governor, and he auctioned off various tax-delinquent properties; last year a federal judge in Delaware ordered Justice to sell six of his companies to settle other outstanding debts, according to reports in West Virginia news outlets.

His trouble with the IRS might not be over. Monday’s agreement covers only 2009, but tax liens filed by the IRS two months ago listed three other years for which the government claims the Justices owe money. The liens, totaling over $8 million, were listed in a public database for Greenbrier County, West Virginia, and were reported previously by Politico.

One filing said the IRS made its initial 2009 tax assessment against the Justices on Nov. 25, 2015, determining then that they owed just over $3 million. That filing also said they owe almost $5 million for 2017 and a much smaller amount — just under $11,000 — for 2022. A separate lien naming Justice alone said he owed roughly $24,000 for 2017.

In his remarks to local news outlets last month, Justice claimed that the IRS had arrived at the $8 million figure largely out of interest and penalties after an audit found that he “should have paid a few more dollars than what I paid” in 2009.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company

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