3 Tips for compliant Christmas presents
Christmas time is customer gift time.
As tax consultants, we experience it anew every year: the heated dance around compliant Christmas presents. Of course, you don’t want to stack too low with high-profile customers. At the same time, there are rules that both we and our customers must abide by.
What do we often notice? Many people lack the knowledge of when a customer gift is actually still compliant. So here are our three tips for customer gifts. Not only at Christmas time!
1. Basically, the legal de minimis limit is 35 euros per person per year. Gifts of this value do not have to be taxed, but are only suitable to a limited extent for high-profile customers who you want to make really happy.
2. In the case of higher values, the donator can tax the gift at a flat rate of 30 percent (plus SoliZ and KiSt). This basically eliminates the tax obligations for the recipient. But be careful: the flat rate only applies to gifts up to 10,000 euros.
3. What we experience again and again: The larger and the more public the company or the person receiving the gift is, the stricter the internal compliance guidelines. Less is sometimes more here – and a gift, no matter how much you would like to give it, may not be appropriate.
Christian Dobner | TLI Steuerberater