Bottoms and her husband have a history of late tax payments

Keisha Lance Bottoms and Rick Jackson are deadlocked in the race to be Georgia’s governor, a powerful executive position in charge of a multibillion-dollar state budget fed largely by taxes on the state’s citizens and businesses.

But both candidates have different approaches to how they handle their own taxes.

Bottoms, the Democratic candidate, and her husband have a history of delinquent property and income taxes going back years, totaling nearly $400,000, according to records reviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. And the IRS claims Jackson, the Republican, improperly claimed almost $54 million in losses in business investments as tax deductions, the AJC found.

A history of late payments

Since 2010, more than a dozen property tax liens totaling more than $47,000 have been placed against properties in either Bottoms’ or her husband, Derek Bottoms, name. Among them are city and state tax liens for delinquent payments and claims from homeowners associations over unpaid fees. A federal tax lien from the Internal Revenue Service shows that Derek Bottoms also owed roughly $343,000 in 2021 for five years’ worth of unpaid income taxes.

While the couple paid off each of the debts, critics say the pattern of late payments undercuts Bottoms’ statements supporting property taxes as the bedrock supporting schools, public safety, transportation and libraries.

For their part, the Bottoms campaign said their candidate paid her taxes, while criticizing Jackson for his disputes with the IRS.

“Derek and Keisha have fully paid all of their taxes,” Bottoms spokesperson TaNisha Cameron said in a statement. “Billionaire Slick Rick Jackson, who owes $54 million in federal taxes and $16 million in penalties, has not. He has even relocated his company to the Cayman Islands to avoid paying taxes in the United States.”

One of Jackson’s shell companies — Jackson Acquisition Company II — is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, a notorious haven for companies seeking to avoid taxes.

Long before Bottoms announced her bid for governor, she faced questions over years of unpaid and past-due bills in her name. In 2017, Channel 2 Action News reported that Bottoms carried an overdue balance on her water bill for years.

Bottoms sat on Atlanta’s City Council at the time, having been elected in 2009 and reelected in 2013. At the time, she earned $60,300 as a councilmember and $135,000 for a role with the Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority.

According to Channel 2, she had owed the Department of Watershed Management as much as $1,300. At the time, she told the television station she paid more than the amount due on several occasions and said at least one of the overdue bills was the result of a billing dispute.

But an analysis of public records connected to Bottoms and her husband shows a financial life punctuated by tax debt year after year. The AJC reviewed 18 property tax liens connected to two Atlanta residences that have been associated with the Bottomses for more than 20 years.

“By the time the lien gets issued, the taxes have been delinquent for a pretty long time,” said Chuck Taylor, CEO of the commercial property and development company HT Group and a Jackson supporter. “They don’t execute a lien if your taxes are a month late. They execute a lien if your taxes have not been paid for a while.”

The AJC asked the Bottoms campaign to clarify if either of the properties is her primary residence. They did not respond. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is not disclosing the exact addresses because of privacy concerns.

The couple purchased one of the Atlanta properties in 2005. It had a lien placed on it in May 2012 by Fulton County for $96. The lien was related to taxes that went unpaid in 2010 and was paid the month after it was recorded.

Previously, Bottoms said some early liens against her stemmed from financial difficulties the couple had because of medical expenses involving unsuccessful attempts to have children. In a YouTube video, Bottoms, who has four adopted children, said her children were “born of my heart.”

“There were plans for us to have children biologically, but God had another way, and I’m so grateful I get to be their mom,” she said.

Earlier this year, Georgia House Republicans proposed fully eliminating property taxes and passed legislation that limits annual property assessment increases.

Bottoms publicly opposed the effort to eliminate property taxes, noting they are the primary funding source for schools and local governments — a stance her Republican counterparts have called hypocritical in light of her fraught tax payment history.

“With Keisha Lance Bottoms, it’s ‘rules for thee and liens for me,’” said Senate Majority Leader Jason Anavitarte. “While she lectures Georgians that cutting their property taxes would be ‘irresponsible,’ she has enough tax liens to make Al Capone blush.”

Bottoms was sworn in as Atlanta’s 60th mayor in 2018. During her first year as Atlanta’s mayor, she was paid roughly $184,000, according to GovSalaries.com. By 2021, her final full year in office, her salary was about $191,000.

While serving as mayor in 2019, Keisha Lance Bottoms’ name was taken off the deed to one of the Atlanta properties. Sole ownership was assumed by her husband, Derek Bottoms, who is the vice president of employment practices and associate relations at Home Depot.

From that year forward, the property has had 11 tax liens placed against it, including one at more than $10,000. Those liens are related to property taxes that went unpaid in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.

In February 2021, three liens were placed against the property, including one for $6,512. Two liens were placed on the property in February of the following year, with one amounting to $6,588. Three liens were placed against the property in both 2023 and 2024. Among those were a $7,500 lien and a $10,200 lien by the city of Atlanta, placed in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

While Keisha Lance Bottoms is not listed as a taxpayer on those liens, the address appears on the financial disclosure statement she filed in April to qualify for office. It also is associated with two corporations for which Bottoms is the chief executive officer.

In 2021, Derek Bottoms also owed the Internal Revenue Service $342,851 related to income taxes that had gone unpaid in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2018 and 2019.

The lien was paid in full on Feb. 2, 2022, according to a certificate from the IRS. However, it did not mark the end of the Bottoms’ issues with delinquent payments.

In September 2025, four months after Bottoms announced her gubernatorial campaign, a $1,150 lien was placed against the Atlanta property still owned jointly by the couple by a homeowners association. It was paid in full two weeks later.

That history has given some observing the governor’s race pause.

“If the candidate does not have her financial house in order, both figuratively and literally, then why would you want to entrust the stewardship of Georgia’s large budget to someone like that?” said David Allman, owner and chairman of the real estate and investment and development company Regent Partners and another Jackson supporter.

Jackson’s tax deductions

Jackson, whose net worth hovers around $3 billion, has taken multiple cases to federal tax court arguing against an IRS decision that about $54 million in tax deductions related to losses from movies Jackson’s companies invested in were improper. The IRS assessed Jackson $16 million in penalties, which he also is disputing.

Jackson filed cases against the IRS in U.S. Tax Court after the federal agency rejected deductions his companies sought from donating the rights of independent films to a charity under Jackson’s control.

Jackson, an Atlanta native, is a healthcare executive best known for the medical staffing business Jackson Healthcare. But he also has invested in a variety of business ventures, including independent movies.

One of those movies, the 2019 film “The Best of Enemies,” starred Taraji P. Henson and Sam Rockwell and tells the tale of “the unlikely bond that formed between an African American civil rights activist and Ku Klux Klan leader,” according to court filings.

Prior to the movie’s release, Jackson’s company donated the movie rights to Family Christian Resource Centers, a charity which Jackson also controls, and claimed the value of the film as a tax deduction on its 2018 tax returns, court filings show. That case is still active, and Jackson is due in court in March.

Jackson had brought a similar case to court over about $18 million in deductions claimed from other films. That case went to trial in 2023. In 2023, a judge determined that the films were overvalued and lowered the deductions by $4 million, but the court largely upheld the deductions and overruled the penalties sought by the IRS.