Lauryn Hill Sentenced to 3 Months in Tax Case

Mel Evans/Associated Press Ms. Hill outside court on Monday.

Lauryn Hill, the Grammy-winning singer and songwriter, was sentenced to three months in prison on Monday afternoon for failing to pay income taxes on about $1.8 million in earnings.

The sentence in federal court in Newark, N.J., was a major setback for Ms. Hill, 37, a critically acclaimed but reclusive artist whose solo debut album in 1998, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” established her as a major figure in R&B and hip-hop, earning five Grammy Awards. She recently announced she had plans to record a new album.

Ms. Hill pleaded guilty last year to charges that she had failed to file tax returns from 2005 to 2007, despite owning four companies and taking in more than $1.8 million in gross revenues, according to the complaint against her. In court, she told the judge she had intended to pay her taxes eventually but was unable to do so when she dropped out of the music business to focus on her children.

“I needed to be able to earn so I could pay my taxes, without compromising the health and welfare of my children, and I was being denied that,” Ms. Hill said in court, according to The Associated Press. Ms. Hill faced a maximum sentence of one year on each of the three counts. Her attorney had sought probation.

She is to report to prison on July 8, The A.P. reported. The judge also sentenced her to an additional three months of home confinement after her release.

On Sunday, Ms. Hill's attorney said she had paid about $970,000 to satisfy her unpaid state and federal tax bills, as well as penalties. That payment came on the eve of the singer's sentencing, nearly two weeks after United States Magistrate Judge Madeline Cox Arleo had scolded her in court for being slow to square her accounts with the government.

“Ms. Hill has not only now fully paid, prior to sentencing, her taxes, which are part of her criminal restitution, but she has additionally fully paid her federal and state personal taxes for the entire period under examination,” her attorney, Nathan Hochman, said in an e-mail sent to Reuters.

Ms. Hill recently announced on her Tumblr blog that she had signed a new record deal and was writing new material. Last week, she released one of her new songs - “Neurotic Society (Compulsory Mix).”

Ms. Hill started out with the Fugees and became a critical darling after her 1998 solo album, which won the Grammy award for album of the year. Then she largely disappeared from view, putting out only two albums in the last 15 years - “MTV Unplugged No. 2.0″ in 2002 and “Khulami Phase” in 2010.

Shortly after her arrest last year, Ms. Hill said in a blog post she had dropped out of the music business to shield herself and her children from society, and she portrayed her decision to stop paying taxes as part of that effort. “I did whatever needed to be done in order to insulate my family from the climate of hostility, false entitlement, manipulation, racial prejudice, sexism and ageism that I was surrounded by,” she wrote.