Just a week before a court-ordered auction of Damon Dash’s one-third stake in Jay-Z’s Roc-A-Fella Records, there’s a stunning new wrinkle: New York State says he owes more than $8.7 million in unpaid taxes and that the Roc-A-Fella proceeds must be used to pay down the huge debt.
In a motion filed Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, New York’s Department of Taxation & Finance asked to legally intervene in the proceedings ahead of the Aug. 29 auction, in which the United States Marshals Service will auction off Dash’s 33.3% interest in the storied record company.
The tax authorities claim that Dash owes more than $8.7 million in unpaid taxes and penalties from personal income he reported from 2005 and 2018 – and that the Roc-A-Fella auction might be their last shot at recouping a debt that has been “delinquent for far too long.”
“To date, the Department has been unsuccessful in its efforts to collect the unpaid New York State tax debt owed by Dash,” attorneys for the state wrote. “Intervening in this matter may be the Department’s only opportunity to collect some of the unpaid taxes Dash owes to New York.”
The new wrinkle is sure to complicate an already-complex situation. The Roc-A-Fella auction is being held to satisfy an $823,000 judgment against Dash, won by movie producer Josh Webber in a civil lawsuit over a failed film partnership. But New York City’s Department of Social Services will actually have first dibs, since Dash also owes a total of $145,096 in unpaid child support.
In their filing on Wednesday, the tax department stressed that it does not seek to jump ahead of child services in pecking order for auction proceeds. But it offered no such promise to Webber – and pointedly noted that it had secured a lien against the Roc-A-Fella proceeds more a decade earlier than he had.
Set to take place next week at a Manhattan hotel, the Roc-A-Fella auction will have a minimum bid of $1.2 million. The sale will be for Dash’s stake in Roc-A-Fella Inc., an entity whose primary asset is Jay-Z’s iconic debut album Reasonable Doubt. The rest of the catalog of music released by Roc-A-Fella, which dissolved in 2013, isn’t involved.
The owners of the other two-thirds of Roc-A-Fella — label cofounders Jay-Z (Shawn Carter) and Kareem “Biggs” Burke — have already attempted to stop the auction, including making changes to the company’s bylaws and intervening in the lawsuit. But a federal judge rejected such opposition in February.
The auction will be coordinated by Webber’s attorney, Chris Brown, who told Billboard earlier this month that he had received numerous inquiries from potential bidders, including corporate investors, high-profile individuals and collectors. Brown not immediately return a request for comment Thursday on the Department of Taxation & Finance’s request to access the proceeds.
Though the auction’s minimum bid has been set at $1.2 million, it’s entirely unclear how much a potential buyer is going to be willing to spend on Dash’s one-third stake.
The royalties from Reasonable Doubt would likely provide them a revenue stream; since its 1996 release, Reasonable Doubt has racked up 2.2 million equivalent album units in the U.S., according to Luminate, including 21,500 units so far this year. But the eventual buyer also would be a minority owner in a company controlled by hostile partners, with little ability to perform typical due diligence on the asset they’re about to purchase. And Roc-A-Fella’s rights to Reasonable Doubt will potentially expire in 2031 thanks to copyright law’s termination right, which would allow Jay-Z himself to reclaim full control.
If any money from the auction is left over, it will go to Dash himself. In a statement to Billboard last month, his attorney Natraj Bhushan said that he and his client would be at the Aug. 29 event and “expect a robust auction with bids entering the several millions if not higher.” Bhushan did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday on the Department of Taxation & Finance’s request to access the proceeds.
