'Prophet' Brian Carn pleads guilty to obstructing IRS, claims he won’t go to prison

Self-styled prophet and leader of Kingdom City Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, Brian Carn Jr., is facing three years in prison after pleading guilty to obstructing the IRS’ efforts to collect more than $600,00 in outstanding taxes.

Carn insists that he won’t be going to prison because he knows how to “handle that stuff in the spirit.”

“It's an accounting error, but it's an accounting error that I have to take responsibility for because it's my taxes,” Carn, 36, said in an interview with Larry Reid about his plea and the charge on Thursday.

When Reid raised concern that he didn’t want him to go to prison for the maximum penalty of three years, Carn said, “Well, I won't be you. You know, I know how to handle that stuff in the spirit.”

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Carn’s guilty plea in a press release Thursday, claiming that he falsely underreported $1.4 million in income for 2015. He reportedly made a number of false representations and material omissions to the IRS to allegedly conceal his assets and income, causing a loss to the U.S. Treasury of between $550,000 and $1,5 million.

Court documents show that Carn operated a ministry under a number of names, including Healing House Ministries, Inc., Brian Carn Ministries, Inc., and Kingdom Culture City Churches. While the ministry isn’t required to report its income to the IRS or pay income taxes under U.S. tax laws, Carn is required to pay taxes on income he received from the ministry.

While he did not earn a salary from the ministry and did not have a written employment agreement, court documents say Carn “received income by withdrawing cash from ministry bank accounts and otherwise using ministry funds to pay for personal expenses.”

Carn’s internal finance manager, who accounted for his income in 2015 and 2016, shared this information with a tax preparer identified as Accountant 1. That accountant then filed a tax return for 2015 and reported his income as $1,451,077, which generated an income tax bill of $606,722.

In October 2016, the IRS started tax collection efforts against Carn and demanded the money he owed. By December that year, the IRS recorded a federal tax lien on the pastor’s assets and issued a levy notice.

Carn, however, had already turned to another accountant identified as Accountant 2 in November 2016 to do an amended tax return for 2015 “that substantially underreported his income.” He allegedly provided the accountant with a fictitious “Employment Agreement” between himself and the ministry dated Jan. 1, 2014.

The agreement stated that he received an annual salary of $120,000 and a yearly parsonage allowance of $24,000.

“CARN represented to Accountant 2 that this was the entirety of his income. CARN knew at the time — and represented to third parties on credit applications, financial account openings, and lease applications — that the income he actually earned through the ministry through cash withdrawals and the payment of personal expenses far exceeded his purported salary in the Employment Agreement,” the court file states.

Carn also filed a series of other tax returns using the fictitious employment agreement in the following years and stopped filing returns in 2020 despite continuing to earn income from his ministry.

The controversial minister, who would have been about 26 when he began filing the fictitious tax returns, told Reid in his interview Thursday that he was young at the time and had just started ministering on huge Christian platforms like Trinity Broadcasting Network and Benny Hinn.

“Thousands of people showing up. I'm not pastoring yet. I haven't even started pastoring. I didn't start pastoring [until] 2016,” he said.

He also argued that at the time, he had never worked a regular job where he received a W2 form.

“I've never worked at a job. I never got income tax at the end, and you know, to go to the income tax people and file your taxes. I never went through that. And so when you're thrust into a world of money and finance and all of that stuff, us as black people, we do file taxes, but we don't file taxes to pay money. We file taxes to get money back,” Carn explained.

He further added that he hadn't yet addressed his guilty plea with his church because he was hoping the information wouldn’t have become public.

“I kind of feel a little bad. I was going to address this. I spoke to the leaders of my church to kind of let them know what was going on. I didn't communicate it to all of the members of the church because if it didn't go public, I didn't want to have to address it,” he said.

“So if they're listening, I don't want them to feel like I'm talking to the world before I'm talking to them [because] it was my intention that I would have went [sic] ahead and addressed it on Sunday. But with the permission of my pastor, … he gave me his permission to go ahead and address it.”