A Florida pastor has been sentenced to nine months in prison for tax evasion. In 2016, Brian Carn Jr. founded Kingdom City Church, which now operates in three different states, and Carn has reportedly run into issues with the IRS since the church’s founding.
In January, Carn, 37, pleaded guilty to obstructing the IRS’s efforts to collect the taxes. Carn reportedly lied to avoid owing about $600,000 in income tax.
Carn reportedly has not received a fixed salary from Kingdom City Church. Instead, he has simply withdrawn cash from his ministry for his own use.
In 2016, Carn’s accountant used information from the ministry to prepare a tax return that listed his 2015 income as around $1.4 million and his taxes owed as $606,722.
Carn reportedly then forged a $120,000-a-year employment contract backdated to that year and hired a different accountant to file an amended return. When the IRS opened an investigation, Carn lied to investigators during a multi-year collections process, opening him up to criminal prosecution.
After pleading guilty, Carn said in a YouTube video, “I did plead guilty because I’m taking responsibility.”
“At the end of the day, it’s my taxes, my name,” said Carn. “It’s what the Lord entrusted me with, and I’m responsible to handle everything that he’s blessed me with integrity. And I didn’t.”
“This is what God is doing in my life,” Carn went on to say. “Identifying things in my life to make sure I have ministerial integrity, financial integrity, relationship integrity, friendship integrity and physical integrity.”
Walter Reynoso, Carn’s defense attorney, told the court that while Carn is “guilty as sin,” Carn is also a generous individual, serving in ministry and at times paying other people’s car bills and medical expenses to help them rebuild their lives.
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“When you get done, you’ll have the rest of your life in front of you to do good,” Judge Timothy Corrigan told Carn. Corrigan also said of Carn, “He failed to render to Caesar, that is, the government, that which belongs to the government.”
