Rules as at 2026, checked against Revenue and HMRC primary guidance in June 2026. Confirm the current position with your accountant before relying on it.
Most articles about corporate gifting skip this question, and once you know the answer you can see why. The companies writing them would rather you did not ask. We would rather you knew exactly where you stand before you spend, because a gift bought on a false assumption sours faster than anything we pack. So: the rules for gifts to clients, customers and contacts, stated plainly.
Are client gifts tax deductible?
Mostly no. Section 840 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 disallows business entertainment expenses for corporation tax, and it states that the disallowance applies to gifts in the same way it applies to entertainment. Entertainment is defined to include accommodation, food and drink, so a hamper to a client sits squarely inside the net. There is no Irish de minimis either: no threshold below which a small client gift quietly becomes deductible.
Two narrow comforts exist. Entertainment provided for your own staff is allowable where it is bona fide staff entertainment and not a side-effect of entertaining third parties; the staff Christmas party and the tax-free employee hamper live under far friendlier rules. And there is a Revenue precedent suggesting that items supplied under the terms of a sales contract, rather than given freely, can fall outside the entertainment rules. That precedent comes from a secondary source rather than the statute, so treat it as a question for your accountant, not a planning tool.
The honest framing is this: a client gift comes out of taxed profits. That does not make it a bad idea. It makes it a relationship expense, like taking someone to lunch, and it should be judged the way you judge a lunch: by whether the relationship is worth it, not by what Revenue gives back. Companies keep doing it because it works, not because it is efficient.
Can I give a gift to a client?
Legally, yes, with three flags worth checking before anything ships.
First, their rules rather than yours. Many large companies cap the value of gifts their staff may accept, and some prohibit them outright. Public sector bodies are strictest of all. A gift that breaches the recipient’s code of conduct puts them in an awkward spot, which is the exact opposite of the intended effect. If in doubt, a gift addressed to a team rather than an individual usually clears internal rules more comfortably than a personal one.
Second, timing. A generous gift that lands mid-tender looks like something other than generosity, whatever the intention. Send gifts at natural moments: Christmas, the close of a project, an anniversary of working together.
Third, proportion. A gift should say thank you, not exert pressure. If the value would embarrass the recipient into reciprocating or disclosing it, scale back. Our piece on how much to spend on a corporate gift puts numbers on that instinct.
Is there VAT on business gifts?
Yes, once the gift costs more than €20 excluding VAT, and the threshold behaves the same unforgiving way as the employee exemption: cross it and VAT is due on the full cost, not the excess. Revenue’s own example is blunt. A €20 gift carries no liability; a €21 gift is liable on the whole €21.
Hampers add a wrinkle that catches people out. A hamper is a multiple supply for VAT, meaning the tax apportions across the contents at each item’s own rate. Smoked salmon is zero-rated; alcohol carries 23 per cent. Two hampers at the same price can therefore carry different VAT depending on what is inside. We will not print a worked example here, because per-item rates need checking against Revenue’s live rates database for the specific contents, and a stale example is worse than none. Your accountant can run the numbers from the hamper’s itemised contents, which we can supply for any corporate order.
There is one exception worth knowing: advertising goods and industrial samples in a form not ordinarily available for sale to the public are outside the gift VAT rules. A branded pen escapes. A hamper does not.
What about gifts to UK clients?
The UK draws the same line in a slightly different place, and if you gift across the Irish Sea both halves matter.
For gifts to your own UK-based employees, the trivial benefits rule applies: tax-free where each gift costs £50 or less, is not cash or a cash voucher, is not a reward for work and is not contractual. There is no annual cap for ordinary employees, though directors of close companies are limited to £300 a year. Note how much lower that £50 bar is than the Irish €1,500; the same hamper can be exempt in Dublin and taxable in Leeds.
For gifts to UK clients, the position is harsher than the Irish one. Client gifts are business entertainment and not deductible, with a single exception for items costing £50 or less that carry a conspicuous advertisement for your business. That exception explicitly excludes food, drink, tobacco and vouchers. A food hamper to a UK client is therefore never deductible for the buyer, branded or not, whatever it costs.
None of this stops you sending the gift; the practicalities of getting a hamper across the border, customs and all, are covered in sending corporate gifts abroad from Ireland. It does mean the UK client hamper, like the Irish one, is a full-price gesture. Budget for it honestly, choose it well, and let the contents do the persuading that the tax system will not subsidise.
