Kanye West is still making headlines, and not for good reason.
On a recent podcast episode, West says he could have gone to prison for owing $50 million to the IRS.
During Timcast IRL, before storming off, the rapper revealed that he learned of owing money to the IRS after a $75 million hold was placed on four of his accounts.
Additionally, West previously claimed adidas was responsible for the closure of his accounts at JPMorgan Chase, according to reports.
“The reason why I’m announcing that I’m running for President is I want the FCC to look at my money. If the FCC was looking at my money, there would be a possibility that adidas wouldn’t have went into JP Morgan Chase and froze my account … and put a $75 million hold on four different accounts,” West said, according to RadarOnline.com.
Later, West learned he owes so much money that he claims people were trying to place him behind bars.
“I’m talking about literally finding out that they were trying to put me in prison this morning,” West explained during the podcast.
West said his “finance people” informed him “you’re going to have to pay a lot of taxes.”
“But I found out — Ok, 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 it — well, around $50 million,” West said.
West was concerned and shared he began reaching out to chief financial officers (CFOs) to see if not paying back his taxes would be considered tax evasion.
“Now, I’m going to different CFOs like, ‘Okay so would this be tax evasion?’ Because I’m obviously not the most financially literate person on the planet,” West said during the podcast.
He continued: “I was just a child basically. When you become famous you stop growing at that point. I became famous at age 24. I had handlers around. I had my mom around. I had different things and it was always you go from one handler to the next handler to the next handler. 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. I was like Pablo at a movie. I didn’t even know where to put the money,” West said.
West has been making headlines frequently as of late due to various comments and anti-semitic statements.
Following the controversies, and being dropped by multiple brands, Forbes reported that West was no longer a billionaire.
As AfroTech previously shared, Forbes estimated that West’s net worth had fallen to $400 million.