Kanye West’s Sunday Service is stripped of charity status
Kanye West’s gospel project, Sunday Service, has been stripped of its charitable status. While previously given tax exemption as it promotes “religious, educational, or charitable” purposes, this is no longer the case.
West started the choir back in 2019, around the time of his album, Jesus Is King. Later in the year, they released their own debut album, Jesus Is Born. The project came about during a deeply religious period in both West’s career and his life. People suspected that the launch of the choir, along with the 60-minute-long services he would host each Sunday for a select group of high-powered invitees, was the rapper’s attempt to essentially build a new church.
For a long time, this seemed to be his main priority. “I spent every dime that I have for marketing from Yeezy on Sunday Service,” West said in 2020. He continued, “Every dollar I had. I spent $50 million last year on Sunday Service… 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.”
Originally, Sunday Service was given a tax exemption. The government decided that it fell under the 501(c)(3) organisation label, meaning that because it served a “religious, educational, or charitable” purpose, the organisation didn’t have to pay tax.
But now, that exemption has been revoked. The Sun wrote that the IRS revoked the status due to improper tax filing, stating that the organisation failed to file a Form 990-series return or notice for “three consecutive years.” Considering the amount of his own finances that West claims to have poured into the project, this could be a heartbreaking or worrying blow to him.
However, over the years, his connection to the project has dwindled as he returned to making secular music and generally appears to be less focused on his religious project. The choir he started have continued to release music and perform on their own. Their second album, Sample Sounds, was released in 2022 with little fanfare and no real mention of West or his role in the project.
Perhaps the choir and its original founder have parted ways as West appears to move further away from his religious era and deeper into a more worrying spiral of antisemitic comments and problematic lyrical content in some of his recent releases.