Swag Bags

KARDASHIAN DILEMMA: TOO MANY FREEBIES!

This is a fascinating tidbit we couldn’t help but share. The Kardashian/Jenner women: matriarch Kris and her daughters, Kourtney, Kim, Khloe, Kendall and Kylie receive SO much free swag that they have a full-time staff of employees at their office whose only job is to open, sort, photograph, and decide what to do with the stuff! Get this, on average EACH one of them receives around 100 boxes of free things every day! From clothing to expensive jewelry, beauty products, home decor items, gourmet food and everything else one could possibly want! They are bombarded with nonstop freebies from designers and companies hoping the women will post about it on their social media. Unfortunately, they get so MUCH stuff that the majority never gets posted nor used. Back in the day, they would sell the freebies but now they’ve decided that was a bad look, so what’s not used is donated.

Photo: Instagram

PARIS HILTON TOOK ROBERT REDFORD’S HINT TO GET LOST

On the first day of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, Robert Redford singled out Paris Hilton and her “ilk” as a destructive force for the event. He admitted the film festival had been “sliding” for the past few years and he blamed the marketeers who took over houses and spaces on Main Street at absurdly inflated rental prices to hand out their swag. He said “You end up with people like Paris Hilton here who have nothing to do with us.” Unfortunately, that year, Paris was already THERE when he made these remarks, and she had tons of empty suitcases ready to be greedily filled up with free stuff. THIS year, for the first time in memory, Paris didn’t embarrass herself by showing up at the 2011 festival and loading up on freebies. Maybe Robert Redford got through to her.

GOLDEN GLOBES: PROBLEM SOLVED

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Will the Golden Globes committee have a hard time booking A-list celebrities as presenters now that they are no longer handing out $40,000 gift bags? We suspected the stars might be a tad less cooperative. The Hollywood Foreign Press gave up the goody bag practice not so much because of Edward Norton’s recent comments in New York magazine about the “shameful” practice, but because they are being forced to pay a million dollars to the IRS for LAST year’s swag bags! But like everything else, there’s a way around this dilemma. Before the Globes event, big companies have rented suites in the Beverly Hilton hotel that will be turned into “gift boutiques” for celebrities. Now the stars can pick out whatever they want, still tax free, and the Globes people have nothing to do with it.

KICKBACKS AND BRIBES GALORE

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This whole gift bag deal is more scandalous than we suspected! Last weekend the presenters and winners at the Emmys Creative Arts (technical – costumes, hair etc) Awards got NO gift Bags. Usually the bags are discreetly tucked in the trunk of the limo picking up each celebrity. Instead they got a message that the bags will be SHIPPED when all their signed paperwork promising to take IRS responsibility is received.
As a result of all this IRS involvement, the Academy will not be giving bags this year. We had no idea what a big bucks disaster that decision is. Did you know the people who supply and fill those goody bags take a hefty FEE from each company donating? (Besides the price of the gifts.) There are kickbacks and bribes galore! The bag fillers routinely collect many more items and certificates than they need for bags and they KEEP the overflow. Sometimes the items appear on eBay. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stuff changing hands- untaxed and unobserved! No WONDER the IRS is sticking it’s nose in.

ACCEPT THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK

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It’s already started. The Goody Bag dilemma with the IRS is heating up and the upcoming Emmys are the first big show to have to deal with it. All presenters expecting the bag of gifts and certificates (don’t kid yourself – it’s the reason most of them show up!) have just received a document from the TV academy that they MUST sign and return before bags are given. The paper states that the gift bag receiver is aware that there might be a”tax problem” in the future and they are accepting the bag at their own risk. The IRS hasn’t decided what to do because most of the individual gifts in the bag are under $10,000, and not subject to taxes, but the bag value can TOTAL up to $40,000 or more. So who pays the taxes? Not the Housewives, we bet.