National Treasure, International Tax Disaster: The IRS vs. Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage didn’t just spend money. He torched it, exorcised it, hurled it into the void. This is a man who raked in $150 million in a single decade and still owed the IRS $14 million.  His financial saga is part cautionary tale, part Hollywood fever dream, and entirely too fascinating to ignore.

So how exactly does one go from Oscar winner to dinosaur-skull repossession? Let’s roll the credits.

Act One: The Rise of a Very Extra Taxpayer

The Cage Collection (Exhibit A in the Audit)

At peak excess, Cage’s portfolio looked less like an investment plan and more like a treasure map gone feral: 15 homes (yes, fifteen), castles in Germany and England, twin New Orleans mansions (one allegedly haunted), a private island in the Bahamas, and, because restraint was never in the script, a shrunken pygmy head. He snapped up a Gulfstream jet, albino cobras, and a $276,000 dinosaur skull later returned to Mongolia. Jurassic debt, anyone?

The Pyramid Scheme (Literal, Not Figurative)

His pièce de résistance? A nine-foot limestone pyramid tomb he commissioned in a New Orleans cemetery. Its purpose remains murky, its symbolism undeniable. When the empire collapsed, the pyramid endured. An eternal flex amid fiscal rubble.

Act Two: When the IRS Came Knocking (And Kept Knocking)

The $6.2 Million Wake-Up Call

By 2009, the IRS had tired of Cage’s improvisational finance routine. They slapped him with a $6.2 million federal tax lien tied to unpaid 2007 taxes. But that was just the teaser trailer. Like a franchise that refused to end, the liens multiplied: property after property, debt after debt, until the tab ballooned to a brutal $14 million. Turns out, you can outspend your own box office.

Enter the Villain: Business Manager Samuel Levin (Allegedly) 

In a courtroom subplot worthy of its own spin-off, Cage sued longtime business manager Samuel Levin for $20 million, alleging fraud, negligence, and reckless navigation. Levin’s counter? Cage was the captain, ignoring every iceberg warning while flooring the throttle.

Who was right? Probably somewhere between. But the wreckage was undeniable: seized sports cars, lost castles, and one lonely shrunken head waiting for adoption.

Act Three: The Great Liquidation

Once the IRS locked on, Cage flipped from collector to frantic liquidator. His empire of oddities hit the auction block. But hawking treasures wasn’t enough, so Cage did what Cage does best—he worked. Prolifically. He churned out films with the desperation of a man haunted by liens: Drive Angry, Season of the Witch, and a torrent of straight-to-streaming flicks. Critics groaned; his bank account sighed in relief.

By 2012, he’d clawed back over $6 million. By 2022, he declared himself debt-free, solvent, and, finally, “more selective” about roles again. Bankruptcy never claimed him. He muscled his way out, taking the scenic (and surreal) route to solvency.

Act Four: The Moral of the Mausoleum

Even National Treasures Pay National Taxes

You can buy castles. You can fly Gulfstreams. You can even reserve a pyramid-shaped afterlife. But the IRS isn’t impressed by vampires, treasure hunters, or Oscar winners. They’re impressed by timely returns and paid balances.

A Tombstone with a Lesson

Today, Cage’s pyramid still looms in a New Orleans cemetery—untouched by auditors, repo men, or time. Whether it’s a symbol of rebirth, artistic madness, or just a granite middle finger to mortality, it remains. A monument not just to a man’s eccentricities, but to the fact that in America, even National Treasures write checks to the IRS.