Mostly no, occasionally yes, and the exception is oddly specific. Worth knowing before you order five hundred of anything.
Written August 2026. General information, not tax advice.
HMRC treats business gifts as entertaining, which is not deductible, unless the gift meets a narrow exception. The gift must carry a conspicuous advertisement for your business, must not be food, drink, tobacco or a voucher exchangeable for goods, and the total cost of gifts to the same person must not exceed 50 pounds in a year. Meet all three and it is an allowable advertising cost. Miss any one of them and the whole thing is disallowed, not just the excess. VAT has its own 50 pound rule that works in a similar but separate way.
Not a discreet logo on the underside. HMRC's wording is a conspicuous advertisement for the business. A branded notebook qualifies. An unbranded bottle of very nice olive oil does not, and neither does the beautifully understated gift your designer will prefer.
This rules out most of what people actually send. Hampers, wine, chocolate, coffee, gift cards. All out, however well branded. The exception exists to allow advertising items, not hospitality by another name.
It is cumulative. Two 30 pound gifts to the same person in the same year breaks it, and when it breaks, the whole amount is disallowed rather than the 10 pounds over the line.
For VAT you can normally recover the input tax on business gifts, but if the total cost of gifts to the same person exceeds 50 pounds excluding VAT in any twelve month period, you have to account for output tax on them. Same number, different rule, different twelve months. Your accountant will thank you for asking rather than assuming.
The practical consequence. The tax rules quietly push you towards a branded, non consumable item under 50 pounds. That is exactly why so much corporate gifting ends up as a branded pen, and exactly why so much of it gets binned. Knowing the rule is what lets you decide when to break it on purpose and simply accept the cost is not deductible.
Printed marketing material is ordinary advertising expenditure and is deductible in the normal way. It is the physical gift that attracts the entertaining rules. That is worth knowing if your budget is tight: a well made letter that reaches the right person is fully deductible, and it is often the part that actually generates the reply.
The Bribery Act 2010 does not set a monetary threshold, and reasonable, proportionate hospitality is not an offence. What matters is intent and context. A modest branded item sent to introduce yourself is not the problem. A significant gift arriving during a live tender is a different conversation, and if you sell into the public sector you should read our page on that before sending anything.
This is general information, not tax advice, and it was written by a software company. The underlying rules are in HMRC's Business Income Manual at BIM45065 and in VAT Notice 700/7. Check your own position with your accountant before committing spend.
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