How you can use the trivial benefit rules to make gifts to staff, and to yourself as a director

TRIVIAL BENEFITS

The season of giving is almost upon us. How can the trivial benefit rules help out with your Christmas shopping?

Directors and employees can be given gifts up to the value of £50 each without paying any tax and your company can claim it as a tax deductible expense.

Directors, and anyone in their household, are restricted to an annual cap of £300 so that is six gifts of up to £50 each. The number of gifts given to staff are unlimited so long as each one doesn’t exceed £50.

The gift can’t be cash and can’t be given in reward for work or performance but things like chocolates, flowers, vouchers, meals, gift sets, a Christmas gift – they are all claimable so long as you don’t exceed that £50 cap, not even by a penny.

So go on… treat yourself and your staff to a Christmas trivial benefit.

“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”

– Sir Winston Churchill

Author: Rebecca Wright, Accountancy and Tax