Kanye West’s Sunday Service Loses Charity Status Over Unfiled Tax Returns

Kanye West‘s Sunday Service, a gospel-inspired musical choir founded by the controversial rapper, has reportedly been stripped of its charity status due to a failure to file tax returns for three consecutive years.

The group appears to be running without West, as he hasn’t been pictured at a Sunday Service session since June last year.

This new development comes after it was reported that West is knee-deep in tax debts owed on his multiple properties across the United States.

West started hosting invite-only musical services with the gospel choir in 2019 to coincide with the release of his album, “Jesus Is King,” and two years later, he filed to register the outfit as a tax-exempt non-profit.

However, reports suggest that the rapper’s Sunday Service has now lost its federal tax-exempt status after West failed to file his returns for three consecutive years. The revocation date on the IRS website is listed as May 15, 2024, confirming that it has lost its charity status, according to The Sun.

Meanwhile, the group is still directed by choir director Jason White, whose relationship with West seems strained, as the pair do not follow each other on Instagram.

“I know Jason personally. The group is now just a choir and not a non-profit, they are on their own and I understand setting up an LLC for Sunday Service Collective,” a source told the news outlet.

After the group’s launch, West did everything he could to promote it. However, they now appear to be running without him, as there’s been no sign of any contribution or activity from the rapper.

Having taken the group to a Coachella performance and an opera at the Hollywood Bowl, among other events, West disclosed in a 2020 interview with Nick Cannon that he’d spent $50 million on the brand since its launch.

“I spent every dime that I have for marketing from Yeezy on Sunday Service. Every dollar I had,” he explained. “I spent $50 million last year on Sunday Service if you add up the operas, if you add up the flights. It was 120 people going to Jamaica.”

He added, “The Yeezys, they were selling themselves. So instead of paying for ads, I invested it in the church. I invested in spreading [the] gospel. I invested in saying Jesus’ name on high.”

However, the “Donda” rapper has had nothing to do with Sunday Service in recent months, and the group had refrained from posting anything about him on its official Instagram handle since 2022 when he came under fire for his antisemitic comments.

According to The Sun, West’s time championing the group’s affairs didn’t come without its hurdles, as he was slammed with two class action lawsuits from previous performers.

Both lawsuits alleged mistreatment from the father-of-four, but one was dismissed in April 2021, while West settled the other in June for $1.35 million.

One of those filings came from Michael Pearson, who worked with the rapper at his Hollywood Bowl shows in November 2019. In his complaint, he noted he was paid $250 a day, regardless of how many hours he worked.

“Failure to pay his overtime wages at the appropriate rate of pay, and failure to pay premium wages for missed meal and rest periods at the appropriate rate of pay,” the lawsuit stated.

Pearson alleged that there weren’t enough chairs for all the performers, so he was forced to stand. Also, a staff shuttle that promised to take them back to their cars never showed up.

He sued on seven counts, including “unlawful and unfair business practices,” with the defendants listed as West, West Brands LLC, Very Good Touring Inc., and AJR Films Inc.

Earlier in the year, West made headlines for his unpaid taxes, which amounted to over a million.

At the time, it was reported that the “Donda” rapper had four outstanding Yeezy Apparel tax liens totaling $934,033. He also had $10,924 and $12,425 tax liens on Donda Services and Yeezy Construction, respectively. Liens worth $101,093 on two of his Los Angeles real estate holdings further added to the debt pile.

Several months have passed, and those debts remain unpaid. They are now mounting further as West appears to have defaulted on tax payments on yet another of his properties.

According to The Sun, the Yeezy founder now owes $2,780.33 and $2,966.66 in property taxes for his $14 million Monster Lake Ranch in Cody, Wyoming.

The payments were expected to come in May, but the rapper skipped out on paying them and sold off the property for an undisclosed sum a few weeks later.

The Yeezy founder’s tax situation isn’t surprising as the rapper has a history of owing millions in taxes to the IRS, per Business Insider.

The rapper once revealed that he owed the organization around $50 million and was about to be jailed for tax evasion.

“I’m talking about literally finding out that they were trying to put me in prison this morning,” the rapper said on the “Timcast IRL” podcast back in November 2022. “But I found out — okay, so they froze, they put a $75 million hold on four of my accounts.”

He added, “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.”

At the time, the rapper blamed his debt on him not being “the most financially literate person on the planet.” He also claimed that he inquired from his “different CFOs” if he had committed tax evasion by not paying his taxes.