Kim Kardashian Donates Most of Her eBay Charity Proceeds to Herself
For the second year in a row, most of the profits from Kim Kardashian's charity eBay auctions appear to have gone to her favorite cause: herself. Radar reports that eBay tax documents from 2013 indicate Kim K pocketed as much as $400,000 selling her used outfits on the auction site, and donated just $44,000 to the ministry her mom founded.
Radar arrived at these numbers by making a few big assumptions. Tax documents from eBay's charitable payment processor show that Kris Jenner's Life Change Community Church received $44,000 in 2013: Radar figures most of that came from Kim, who has the biggest eBay store of anyone giving to the ministry.
They also extrapolate from a December 2013 statement where Kim, under fire for donating just 10 percent of her eBay sales to typhoon relief efforts in the Philippines, explained that it was just standard practice for her: She gives 10 percent to charity every month.
"In regards to these eBay auctions, when the eBay numbers get broken down, the auction management agency that posts for me gets a percentage for all of their hard work, then eBay listing fees, end of auction fees, eBay Store fees, Paypal fees, etc., all add up to about half of the sale," Kim explained at the time. "Then I give 10 percent to a charity."
Based on that, Radar calculated that Kim's take-home pay from her 2013 auctions must have been about 10 times what her mom's church earned on eBay, roughly $440,000.
But their number could actually be low, considering that Kardashian changes her eBay charity from time to time, as in the Philippines relief example.
Although it seems disingenuous to run charity auctions where only a fraction of the profits go to charity—and usually a charity run by your family, at that—this line of attack might actually be uncharitable (sorry) to Kim.
"I give 10 percent of all my earnings to charities, not just these eBay auctions," she said in December.
If that's accurate, and she's not just dumping all of that money into Life Change, some nonprofits could end up with a pile of sweet, sweet in-app purchase money from the Kim Kardashian iPhone game, which could make $200 million this year.
[H/T WeSmirch, Photo of Kim Kardashian using eBay via Getty Images]