Bulk gifts for Christmas and New Year

Gifts worth up to 50,000 rupees to one employee in a financial year are not treated as a supply, so no GST falls on you. A December gift set rarely crosses that on its own, but it counts towards the same annual total as every other gift that person receives from you, including anything they were given at Diwali. Above the limit most advisers say GST applies to that person's whole year of gifts, and no circular settles it. Where the benefit is written into the employment contract, CBIC treats it as part of pay and the test does not apply at all.

No. Section 17(5)(h) of the CGST Act blocks input tax credit on goods disposed of as gifts, and credit already taken has to be reversed. So treat the GST on this order as a real cost rather than something you recover, and budget on the number including tax.

We raise the tax invoice when the goods leave us, which is what GST requires of us, so an order that ships on 21 December is invoiced in December and an order that ships in January is invoiced in January, whatever date your purchase order carries. If the booking date is the thing that matters, tell the desk before you confirm and we will work the dispatch date back from it.

Not for your own staff. Gifts to employees are taxed through salary instead. The rule on benefits and perquisites, which used to be Section 194R and now sits in the Income-tax Act 2025, catches people running a business or profession, such as dealers, distributors and contractors, once one recipient crosses 20,000 rupees in a financial year, and 20 percent applies where they have no PAN. Only you can total that annual per recipient figure. Our invoices carry the per unit value and our delivery records are per address, so your finance team has what it needs to track it. Information, not tax advice.

Offices thin out in the last days of December and many close between Christmas and New Year, so the gift has to reach people while they are still at their desks. Confirm by Tuesday 22 December and it reaches you inside four days. Above 5,000 units, or with custom packaging, or split across a long address list, work about two weeks earlier than that. Popular items also go out of stock through December, so an early confirmation buys you choice as much as time.

Yes, and it is worth asking for rather than assuming. A New Year gift delivered on 31 December arrives in a building nobody is in, so for a kick off we set the dispatch date with you instead of working to a published cut off. Call the bulk orders desk, tell us the date your teams are back, and we will confirm what can be branded, packed and sent to land on it.

We take orders of under 50 units, especially if you have a year-round requirement. Most December programmes run between 500 and 10,000. The price per gift rises on a small order, because branding setup costs the same however few pieces it covers.

That is the normal case for a December list. You send one address list and one purchase order, and we bill each consignment against it. For a scheme running to dealer counters we send back proof of delivery per address, which is what most finance teams ask for at the end.

Across hundreds of addresses a few pieces will always arrive damaged. Report the shortfall with the delivery reference and we replace them. We would rather budget for that openly than pretend it does not happen.