- West reportedly has two years of unpaid property taxes on a Wyoming ranch
- He also allegedly has tax liens on multiple companies and properties
- It’s unclear how much of the former billionaires fortune remains
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Kanye West‘s financial issues have seemingly become even more dire as his tax bills have allegedly risen above $1 million.
The rapper now owes additional property taxes on a Wyoming ranch, according to the US Sun.
According to Park Country records viewed by the publication, West’s firm Psalm Cody Ranch LLC was due to make two payments of $2,780.33 and $2,966.66 on property taxes for his Monster Lake Ranch in Cody, Wyoming, in May of this year, but it has so far not paid the taxes.
West — whose ex Amber Rose gave a controversial speech at the Republican National Convention this week — purchased the ranch for $14 million, and he has had it on the market for the last three years before recently selling it.
Those sums add to a mountain of debts, including four tax liens on Yeezy Apparel amounting to $934,033 in total.
The 47-year-old rapper’s properties have also allegedly been hit with multiple tax liens, including liens of $101,093 on two of his Los Angeles properties.
A legal insider who spoke to the US Sun regarding West legal entanglements claimed that West may use his non-payment as a way to establish ‘control’ — both over his employees and those seeking to extract funds from him.
Earlier in July, it was reported that West’s attorney Brian Brumfield had dropped him as a client and withdrawn from two lawsuits he had been representing the rapper in, according to court documents.
He claimed in filings that West ‘will not speak to counsel’ and ‘refuses to pay counsel as well.’
The legal insider said that ‘Dealing with him in a lawsuit is impossible,’ as ‘there’s no compromise or reasonable behavior from him or his attorneys, who get barely any direction from him, so just keep the suit rolling — and keep billing him.’
‘After dealing with his team for years, they like to retain unpredictable control, money seems not to be the ultimate priority, but making the other side sweat,’ they continued. ‘It’s sticking the middle finger up to the courts and showing that this lawsuit means absolutely nothing to Kanye.
‘It makes any legal action protracted and difficult,’ the insider added.
Although failing to pay his bills may be a strategy the former hitmaker uses, it’s unclear how much of his fortune — which was once valued at over $1 billion — still remains.
Much of that money was tied up in stock and business deals that disappeared after companies including Adidas dropped him in the wake of repeated antisemitic statements West made.
Adidas ceased selling his lucrative Yeezy shoes amid the controversy, and now there appears to be trouble at his Yeezy fashion company.
Earlier this year, all of the items sold by the fashion house were discounted — sometimes severely — to just $20.
And now Yeezy’s website is simply blank, aside from a small batch of text reading: ‘YZY IS NO LONGER ACCEPTING ONLINE PURCHASES UNTIL ALL EXISTING ORDERS ARE FULFILLED.’
It adds that there are ‘2500 ORDERS REMAINING,’ as of July 16.
The site was inundated with orders after West introduced it in a Super Bowl ad and announced the $20 price, including on items originally sold on his website for hundreds of dollars.
He claimed in a follow-up social media post that the site has seen $19.3 million in sales from the burst of activity.
The site reportedly went on to earn $70 million in the first quarter of 2024, according to the US Sun.
Although the closing of the site is believed to be a temporary move, the lack of any products on sale will reportedly still cost the Monster rapper millions in lost revenue.
The chaos with the site appears to mirror the disorganization behind the scenes at Yeezy.
West reportedly originally hired designers and other creative talents on contract, primarily from Los Angeles, but amid his controversies in recent years he has begun hiring primarily freelancers, many of whom are based in the UK.
He has reportedly hiring designers from the London-based fashion apparel firm Mowalola, although they continue to work at their original employers with its apparent blessing.
The firm’s namesake, Mowalola Ogunlesi, was previously the designer of the Yeezy’s disastrous line for Gap, but she left to start her own company, though she continued to design some of West’s wife Bianca Censori’s scandalous ensembles.
She has credited West with helping to make a 2023 fashion show in London possible thanks to his funding.
According to the US Sun, at least six designers for Mowalola are also working as freelancers for Yeezy.
West is also allegedly seeking designers with few qualifications. He is reported accepting students, interns and early-career designers with little experience to work at Yeezy.
His fashion company has even begun advertising for designer hires on Craigslist and other social media sites, rather than working through standard industry channels.
