Nobody wants to be the company that sent something mean, and nobody wants to explain to the board why the gift budget rivals the marketing budget. The right spend sits between those fears, and it is easier to find than the silence around it suggests. Here are the numbers we see, the bands that work, and the tax cliffs that should shape both.
How much should you spend on corporate gifts?
Start from the purpose, not the price list. A gift’s job is to make the relationship feel valued in proportion to what it is. From the thousands of corporate orders that pass through us, four bands cover nearly everyone:
Under €50 is token territory: a thank-you to a casual contact, a small gesture to a large list. Done well it charms; the risk is a thin hamper that reads as obligation, in which case a single excellent item beats a basket of filler, as we argue in are hampers a good corporate gift.
€50 to €100 is the workhorse band, where most team-wide and general client gifting sits. Enough for a hamper with a real centrepiece and named producers, not so much that anyone’s compliance team raises an eyebrow.
€100 to €250 marks out the relationships that matter: key clients, long-standing partners, senior colleagues marking a milestone. The gift should feel chosen rather than batched at this level.
Above €250 is statement territory, for the handful of relationships a business is genuinely built on. Spend here deliberately and rarely; a €400 hamper to twenty people says less than the same hamper to four.
Two cautions bracket everything. Below about €25 a corporate gift starts to cost goodwill rather than earn it. And at any level, check the recipient can accept it: many companies cap acceptable gift values, and public bodies sit strictest of all.
How much for clients vs employees?
The instinct is to spend more on clients, and the tax system pulls hard in the opposite direction. It is worth understanding the asymmetry before setting the two budgets.
Employee gifts are subsidised, in effect. Within the Small Benefit Exemption an employer can give up to €1,500 per employee per year across five non-cash benefits, tax-free in the employee’s hands. The cliff matters: a single gift over €1,500 is taxed on its full value, so generous employers should stay comfortably under, but inside the limit every euro spent arrives as a full euro of gift.
Client gifts get no help at all. They are not deductible for corporation tax, and once a gift costs more than €20 excluding VAT, output VAT is due on its full cost. A client hamper is paid for from taxed profits, which does not make it a mistake; it makes it a marketing decision to take with open eyes.
In practice most companies land where you would expect: a consistent, decent band for every employee, since consistency is half the message, and a tiered client budget that concentrates the money where the relationships are. What looks odd is the inverse: lavish client gifts alongside token staff ones, a pattern employees notice faster than clients do.
How much on corporate food gifts?
Food rewards the middle of the range more than the extremes. The difference between a €30 and an €80 food gift is dramatic: it is the difference between a box of biscuits and a hamper with smoked salmon, farmhouse cheese and a bottle worth opening. The difference between €300 and €400 is real but quieter. So the food-specific advice is to fund the band where quality changes fastest, roughly €60 to €150, before buying size.
A second food-specific rule: spend on contents before presentation. A magnificent basket with ordinary food in it is a prop; ordinary wrapping around exceptional food is a gift. The full argument about what belongs inside is in what should go in a corporate Christmas hamper.
For calibration, our own hampers run from around €40 to €650, and the corporate centre of gravity sits firmly in that €60 to €150 stretch, with key-client orders reaching €200 and beyond.
What do companies typically spend?
Honest answer first: there is no reliable published survey of Irish corporate gift spending, and the figures that circulate online are mostly American, mostly vendor-produced and mostly stale. Anyone quoting a precise national average is decorating a guess.
What we can offer is what our own order book shows, for whatever a seafood company’s window on the market is worth. Team-wide Christmas orders most commonly land between €50 and €120 per person. Client gifts cluster slightly higher, €80 to €200, with a long thin tail above that for the marquee relationships. Spend per head has drifted upward over recent years, partly inflation and partly remote work making the posted gift carry weight the office party used to.
The deeper truth is that nobody remembers whether a hamper cost €75 or €95. They remember whether it felt considered. Set a band you can repeat next year without flinching, spend it on contents rather than ribbon, and put the saved agonising into getting the delivery right.
