Kanye West says that the Internal Revenue Service has put a hold on four of his bank accounts because the rapper owes the federal government $50 million in taxes.
West, who has changed his legal name to Ye, made the revelation during an interview with right-leaning podcaster Tim Pool on Monday.
Ye bolted the interview on Pool’s “Timcast IRL” podcast after the host pushed back on the rapper’s latest anti-Semitic comments about alleged Jewish control of the media.
The rapper appeared on the podcast alongside white nationalist Nicholas Fuentes and controversial media personality Milo Yiannopoulos, who is now working for Ye’s presidential campaign.
Fuentes and Ye dined last week with Donald Trump at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, igniting outrage.
Before the contentious portion of the interview, Ye opened up about his finances.
The “Gold Digger” crooner, who appeared on the podcast to promote his 2024 presidential campaign, told Pool that his “finance people” told him he will “have to pay a lot of taxes.”
“I’m talking about literally finding out that they were trying to put me in prison this morning,” Ye said. “But I found out — okay, so they froze, they put a $75 million hold on four of my accounts.”
“And then they said, you owe a lot of taxes. Took me like six hours to find out how much a lot was,” Ye said.
“Well, it was around $50 million.”
The Post has sought comment from the IRS.
During the interview, Ye acknowledged that he was “obviously not the most financially literate person on the planet.” He said he asked “different CFOs” who were tied to his businesses whether he is evading taxes.
“So now I’m having — I get to actually learn how to run a company. I get to learn how to, you know, to count, really,” Ye said.
“It’s like I didn’t even know where to put the money.”
Ye has generated considerable amounts of negative publicity in the past two months that has cost him lucrative partnerships with top brands including Adidas and Gap.
Adidas, the Germany-based sports apparel maker, announced last week that it was launching an internal investigation over claims that Ye, who partnered with the company in selling his Yeezy brand of clothing and shoes, showed pornographic material to staffers.
Adidas cut ties with Ye last month after the rapper unleashed a bizarre anti-Semitic tirade on social media. Gap, another corporate partner which sold Ye’s apparel line, also dropped him in the wake of his incendiary remarks.
Ye and Adidas partnered up to sell his Yeezy shoe line back in 2013.
The company faced criticism for not divorcing the former billionaire sooner, which many chalked up to the fact that Ye-branded shoes raked in almost $2 billion in sales last year for Adidas, according to Morgan Stanley.
Ye’s terminated partnerships have reportedly cut his net worth from an estimated $2 billion to a comparatively paltry $400 million, according to Forbes.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
