Terrence Howard must pay nearly $1 million in back taxes after saying it was “immoral for the United States government to charge taxes to the descendants of slaves.”

The order comes from a federal judge after the IRS tried to collect $578,000 in income taxes that the Academy Award-winning actor, 54, had not paid between 2010 and 2019, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

The Justice Department sued Howard, star of “Empire” in 2022, but his response, per the report, was “an angry voicemail.”

“Four hundred years of forced labor and never receiving any compensation for it,” Howard said, according to a court transcript. “Now you have the gall to try and prosecute and charge taxes to the descendants of a broken people that you are responsible for causing the breakage.”

Howard has a history of tax issues.

The Inquirer reports the IRS put a $1.1 million lien on his property in 2010 for not paying taxes in 2007 and 2008, and federal prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into him and his wife, Mira Pak, in 2019 for tax evasion.

Mark Heim is a reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim. He can be heard on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5 FM in Mobile or on the free Sound of Mobile App from 6 to 9 a.m. daily.