American rapper, songwriter, record producer and fashion designer. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential hip hop artists and producers Kanye West’s Yeezy apparel brand owes the state of California some bread.
According to NBC News, the fashion designer’s company owes California over $600,000 in unpaid taxes and received three separate tax lien notices from July 2021, Feb. 2022, and Sept. 2022.
“Multiple California tax liens, adding up to $600,000, that’s certainly a sign of either extreme incompetence or extreme cash problems,” expressed USC Gould School of Law Professor Edward McCaffery, who specializes in tax law. “That is kind of an Amber Alert for the financial health of the enterprise,” according to Vibe.
According to California’s government website, the state may issue a lien if a company, entity, or taxpayer fails to respond to their inquiries about taxes owed, pay in full, or set a repayment plan.
The debt issue adds to growing financial ruin for the disgraced entertainer and his businesses, as he recently disclosed he owes over $50 million in taxes to the IRS.
During an interview with the Timcast IRL podcast on Monday (Nov. 28), Ye revealed his troubled financial situation to host Tim Pool. He detailed that his “finance people” told him he would “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,” the fashion designer 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, well, around $50 million,” he said.
West continued saying he isn’t “the most financially literate person on the planet” and went around to his businesses’ “different CFOs” to see whether or not what he was doing was tax evasion.
“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 of his finances. “It’s like I didn’t even know where to put the money.”