Chrisleys Hit With $1.5M IRS Tax Lien After Trump Pardon: The Bill That Didn't Go Away

Todd and Julie Chrisley may have walked out of prison thanks to a presidential pardon, but the IRS clearly didn’t get the memo. According to a new federal tax lien filed in Davidson County, Tennessee on Aug. 19, 2026, the couple owes more than $1.5 million in unpaid taxes. The paperwork, obtained by Page Six, breaks it down to $142,410.72 for 2021 and $1,429,041.89 for 2022. That’s a big number, and it’s not going anywhere just because the criminal case did.

Here’s what makes this story so buzzy. Trump pardoned the Chrisleys in May 2025, ending their sentences for bank fraud and tax evasion. But a pardon erases a conviction, not a debt. The lien covers unpaid assessments that are separate from the pardoned offenses, which means the tax bill survived the pardon entirely intact. The couple, convicted in June 2022 and sentenced to 12 and seven years respectively, are now hosting“Chrisley Confessions 2.0.”Their daughter Savannah even joked on the podcast that Todd taught financial classes in prison. The irony is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

So what happens next? The Chrisleys haven’t publicly addressed the new lien, and it’s unclear how they plan to handle it. But it raises a bigger question about what a pardon actually covers and whether fame changes the math when the IRS comes calling. One thing’s for sure: the taxman doesn’t care about your podcast numbers. What do you think? Should a pardon wipe out unpaid taxes too, or should the bill always stand?