Article: Corporate Gift Limits in 2026: Which Rules Actually Apply to You

Share

Corporate Gift Limits in 2026: Which Rules Actually Apply to You

Q: Does the FINRA $300 gift limit apply to my company?

Only if your firm is a FINRA member, a broker-dealer, or one of its associated persons. It binds the regulated firm as the giver. If you are not a FINRA member, Rule 3220 places no limit on what you may send. Nor does it govern what a recipient may accept: Rule 3220 and its recordkeeping requirements are about gifts given, not gifts received. What can still get a gift refused is the recipient's employer's own internal policy, which many regulated firms keep as a conflicts-of-interest matter and set at whatever threshold they choose.

Q: Is the IRS $25 limit the most I can spend on a client gift?

No. It is a deduction cap, the maximum your business can write off per recipient per year. It does not limit what you may spend or what a recipient may accept. It has not been adjusted since 1962.

Q: How do I find out what a specific recipient can accept?

Ask them. Does your company have a gift policy or a value cap is a normal question, and an assistant or compliance contact will answer it. Trying to infer the answer from someone's industry or job title is where programs go wrong.

Search for corporate gift limits and you will get four numbers thrown at you as though all four are live at once: $20, $25, $300, and another $300. That framing is where most of the confusion starts, because for the overwhelming majority of companies only one of those numbers applies at all.

The other three are industry-specific or recipient-specific. They matter enormously if you are in the narrow set they cover, and they are irrelevant to everyone else.

So start with the one that almost certainly applies to you.

Which gift limit applies to my company?

One rule applies to essentially every business that gives business gifts: the IRS $25 deduction cap. The rest depend either on what industry you are in or on who the recipient works for — and most companies are not covered by any of them.

Rule	Who it actually applies to	The number	Does it apply to you?
IRC §274(b) / IRS Pub. 463	Every business that deducts business gifts, in any industry	$25 per recipient, per year	Almost certainly yes
FINRA Rule 3220	Only FINRA member firms (broker-dealers) and their associated persons, and only for gifts related to the business of the recipient’s employer	$300 per person, per year	Only if your firm is a FINRA member
MSRB Rule G-20	Only municipal securities dealers and municipal advisors	$300 per person, per year	Only if you are one of those
5 CFR 2635.204(a)	Governs what a federal executive-branch employee may accept — a rule on the recipient, not on you	$20 per occasion, $50 per year, per source	Only if you are gifting federal employees

Two structural points worth being clear about, because they are the source of most of the mess:

The IRS rule constrains you. The FINRA and MSRB rules constrain regulated firms. If your company is not a broker-dealer, municipal dealer or municipal advisor, those rules place no limit on what you may send.
The federal ethics rule works in the opposite direction — it limits what the recipient may accept, regardless of who is sending.

The rule that applies across the board: the $25 IRS deduction cap

If you take one thing from this page, take this: the $25 is a deduction cap, not a spending cap — and it is a rule about the giver. It lives on your own tax return. It limits what your business may write off, and it places no limit whatsoever on what you may spend or on what a recipient may accept. Nobody has ever sent a gift back because of it.

Do not let the size of the number fool you into waving it off. $25 sounds too small to plan around, which is precisely why it gets misread as a spending ceiling — and the misreading is the expensive part. We have watched companies cap an entire gifting program at $25 a head believing it was a legal maximum, when the only real constraint was their own budget. The number is trivial. The decision it quietly distorts is the whole program.

The details that actually matter:

It is $25 per recipient per year, not per gift. Four $25 gifts to the same client across a year still produce a $25 deduction for that client.
It was set in 1962 and has never been indexed for inflation.
Gifts to a company for general use are treated differently from gifts to a named individual.
Widely distributed branded items costing roughly $4 or less with your name on them generally count as advertising rather than gifts.

Do engraving, packaging and shipping count toward the $25 limit?

Generally no — and this is the single most useful thing on this page. Under IRS Publication 463, incidental costs such as engraving, packaging, shipping and insurance are not included in the $25 limit, provided they do not add substantial value to the gift itself.

The practical consequence runs against most people’s instincts. The parts of a gift a recipient registers immediately — that it arrived well, that it was presented properly, that it had their name on it — sit largely outside that ceiling. If the deduction cap is what is shaping your program, presentation and personalization are the cheapest quality you can add.

When do the financial-services rules matter?

Only if your firm is the regulated one. And even then, these are rules about giving — neither FINRA nor the MSRB regulates what your recipient is permitted to accept.

This is the distinction that gets lost, and it cuts twice.

FINRA Rule 3220 binds a FINRA member and its associated persons as the giver. A manufacturing company sending a gift to someone who works at a broker-dealer is not bound by Rule 3220 at all. And the rule’s supervision and recordkeeping requirements likewise cover gifts a member and its people give out — not gifts they receive. The same is true of MSRB Rule G-20, which restricts what dealers and municipal advisors may give.

So what actually determines whether your box gets kept? The recipient’s own employer’s internal policy. Many regulated firms maintain one — as a conflicts-of-interest and code-of-ethics matter rather than because Rule 3220 obliges them to — and the threshold is set by that firm, sometimes near the regulatory figure and often well below it. It is a private policy, and there is nowhere to look it up.

For the firms that are covered, 2026 changed the number:

FINRA raised its limit from $100 to $300 per person per year. The SEC approved the amendment on February 12, 2026 and it took effect March 30, 2026 — the first change since the rule was adopted in 1992.
FINRA made matching changes in Rules 2310, 2320, 2341 and 5110.
The amended rule codifies aggregation: gifts from a broker-dealer and its associated persons to the same recipient are added together across the year against the single $300. Three people at one firm each sending a $150 gift to the same contact is a $450 problem.
The MSRB matched $300 in Rule G-20, with compliance from June 1, 2026 for FINRA-member dealers and December 1, 2026 for municipal advisors and non-FINRA bank dealers.

And even for covered firms: $300 is a ceiling, not a target. FINRA’s own notice says plainly that other laws, regulations and employer policies may impose lower limits or additional requirements.

What if I’m gifting someone who works for the government?

Then the binding rule is on their side, and it is much lower. A federal executive-branch employee may generally accept gifts worth $20 or less per occasion, up to $50 per year from any one source. The exception never covers cash or investment interests.

This one is narrow but close to absolute, and it does not care what industry you are in.

What about my industry specifically?

Probably nothing beyond the $25 deduction cap — but do not take that from a blog post. Several sectors run their own gift regimes that this article does not attempt to cover, healthcare being the most significant one for corporate gifting, along with state and local government, which varies by jurisdiction.

We are deliberately not enumerating them. The number of combinations is large, the rules change, and getting it wrong from a general article is worse than not looking it up.

So what should you actually do?

The workable version of all of this is short:

Assume the $25 deduction cap applies to your business. It almost certainly does. Treat it as a tax question, not a program constraint.
Do not assume any of the others apply to you. If you are not a regulated financial firm and you are not gifting federal employees, they don’t.
Ask the recipient rather than mapping their regime. “Does your company have a gift policy or a value cap?” is one question, and an assistant or compliance contact will answer it. That single question replaces all the guessing.
If your own firm is regulated, the number comes from your compliance team, not from a vendor.
Add one column to the recipient list: what can this person accept, and up to what value. Almost no gift list has this field, and it is the only piece of data that can void an otherwise finished program.

Acceptance limits are only one of the places a gifting program comes apart once it scales. The other six are in 7 Reasons Corporate Gifting Campaigns Fail at Scale.

What BirdieBox can and can’t help with

We are not your compliance department, and no gifting vendor should pretend to be. Nothing above is tax or legal advice — we are a gifting company, and the rules here are summarized rather than applied to your situation. We can build the boxes, hold inventory, collect and validate addresses, print variable notes, and photograph every box before it ships. We cannot tell you what a specific person at a specific firm may accept, and anyone offering to is guessing.

Get your acceptance rules from your own legal, tax or compliance team, then tell us the number. A cap is only a measurement — it sets what you can spend and says nothing about what you want the gift to do. That second question is the one worth your time, and the one we can help with.

The honest caveat: none of this makes a gift work on its own. A gift will not repair a client relationship that is failing for real reasons — those clients leave whatever you send them. What gifting does well is keep a good relationship from quietly going cold, which is how most of them actually end.

Frequently asked questions

What is the corporate gift limit in 2026?

For most businesses there is only one: the IRS allows a deduction of $25 per recipient per year, and that is a tax limit rather than a cap on what you may spend. The often-quoted $300 figure comes from FINRA and MSRB rules that apply only to broker-dealers, municipal securities dealers and municipal advisors. A separate $20-per-occasion limit governs what federal executive-branch employees may accept. Unless you are in one of those categories or gifting government employees, the $25 deduction cap is the only rule in play.

Does the FINRA $300 gift limit apply to my company?

Only if your firm is a FINRA member — a broker-dealer — or one of its associated persons. It binds the regulated firm as the giver. If you are not a FINRA member, Rule 3220 places no limit on what you may send. Nor does it govern what a recipient may accept — Rule 3220 and its recordkeeping requirements are about gifts given, not gifts received. What can still get a gift refused is the recipient’s employer’s own internal policy, which many regulated firms keep as a conflicts-of-interest matter and set at whatever threshold they choose.

Is the IRS $25 limit the most I can spend on a client gift?

No. It is a deduction cap — the maximum your business can write off per recipient per year. It does not limit what you may spend or what a recipient may accept. It has not been adjusted since 1962.

Do shipping and engraving count toward the $25 IRS gift limit?

Generally no. Per IRS Publication 463, incidental costs such as engraving, packaging, shipping and insurance are not included in the $25 limit, provided they do not add substantial value to the gift itself.

Did FINRA raise its gift limit in 2026?

Yes. The SEC approved the amendment to FINRA Rule 3220 on February 12, 2026, raising the limit from $100 to $300 per person per year, effective March 30, 2026 — the first change since the rule was adopted in 1992. The MSRB matched it in Rule G-20, with a December 1, 2026 compliance date for municipal advisors and non-FINRA bank dealers.

How do I find out what a specific recipient can accept?

Ask them. “Does your company have a gift policy or a value cap?” is a normal question, and an assistant or compliance contact will answer it. Trying to infer the answer from someone’s industry or job title is where programs go wrong.

When should we start a holiday gifting program?

Earlier than feels necessary. Holiday programs run on three published cut-offs — priority, standard and rush — and those dates are set each year, so work from the current ones on our holiday gifting page rather than from last season. Exceptions can usually be accommodated outside those windows but may carry an additional fee.

Ready to start a program?

Tell us the recipient count, your per-person number, and the date it needs to land. Then the part that decides whether it works: who these people are, and what you want them to take from it. One box or one thousand, no minimums.

Get started →

Sources