Courtney Love Owes Millions in Taxes

Courtney Love reportedly owes almost $2.4 million in unpaid taxes accumulated over the last four years. The Sun acquired Love’s official tax records, showing that she has outstanding debts to the government accumulated from 2017 to 2021. The 57-year-old singer owes money to both the IRS and the state of California.

Love reportedly owes a total of $1.9 million in federal taxes, spread out across three liens with the Internal Revenue Service. She owes almost half a million dollars to the state of California as well, reporters discovered on Thursday. Love has a history of financial trouble including tax liens going back as far as 2003. The news of her debts makes more sense out of the op-ed she wrote for The Financial Times earlier this month about “overspending.”

“Financial literacy is one of the most critical things an artist can have. But it seems scary,” Love wrote at the time. “It’s scary understanding my fault in all this – in acknowledging my overspending. It isn’t a big secret that I suffer from the disease of addiction – in particular, financial stress tends to make me go cuckoo-bananas if I’m triggered by it. A lot of musicians and poets are afflicted with addiction.”

Love has not commented publicly on the reports of her financial woes, and her representatives did not respond to reporters from The Sun. Love is the lead singer of the band Hole and is also known for her acting career as well as her marriage to the late frontman of Nirvana, Kurt Cobain. Some of her money troubles are tied up in Cobain’s legacy to this day.

Love has reportedly been in a legal dispute for years with her daughter’s ex-husband, Isaiah Silva. Love and Cobain’s daughter Frances Bean was briefly married to Silva, who is now in possession of the guitar that Cobain played in his infamous MTV Unplugged session. Silva sued Love, claiming that she tried to have him kidnapped and tortured in order to get the valuable cultural artifact back. That case is ongoing.

Love and her 29-year-old daughter co-own the Nirvana brand with surviving Nirvana bandmates Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic. This ensures that the family continues to earn money from Nirvana merchandise and records. It continues to protect that intellectual property actively.

It is not clear what comes next for Love financially or how her case will move forward. The singer claims that she is working on new music.