Are Gifted Products Taxable in the UK? A Creator's Guide to PR Packages and Freebies
A brand sends you a £400 skincare bundle and asks you to post about it. Nothing lands in your bank account and nobody sends you a form. So have you earned £400?
The quick answer
Usually, yes. If you receive products in return for promoting a brand — or with an understanding that you will — the value normally counts as taxable income, in the tax year you receive it, just as if the brand had paid you cash.
HMRC says this directly in its guidance for content creators: when working out your income from creating online content, you must include the value of any gifts or services you received from promoting products online, because these count as income.
Three consequences follow, and they are the parts creators most often miss:
Taxable gifted-product value counts towards the £1,000 trading allowance. You can need to register for Self Assessment on gifted products alone, having never been paid in cash.
Taxable gifted-product value forms part of your gross income, which is what the Making Tax Digital thresholds are measured against.
Receiving something and being able to deduct something for it are two separate questions. The income goes in either way.
There is one area where the answer is genuinely less settled, and it is not the one most creators expect: non-transferable trips and experiences. That is covered below rather than glossed over.
When a product is payment rather than a gift
The dividing line is whether anything is expected in return.
If a brand sends you a product on the understanding that you will post, story, review or tag — even where the arrangement is a direct message and nothing is signed — you have not received a present. You have been paid in goods. In tax terms this is a barter: you supply promotional services, and the product is the consideration.
The same applies to:
Products supplied by an agency running a campaign for a brand.
Items you keep after a paid collaboration, where retaining the product was part of the arrangement in practice.
Vouchers, gift cards and platform credits. Some affiliate programmes pay in gift cards; those are income in the same way cash is.
The underlying rule is that a trading receipt must be money or money's worth — something with monetary value, or that can be turned into money. A physical product you keep is straightforwardly money's worth: it has a value and you could sell it. This was long-established in case law and, for transactions from 16 March 2016, is set out in section 28A of the Income Tax (Trading and Other Income) Act 2005.
What about unsolicited PR?
Genuinely unsolicited items are different. If something arrives with no brief, no conditions and no expectation, and you give nothing in return, there is no transaction to bring into account.
Some PR arrangements carry an informal expectation even when there is no written brief, so look at what was actually communicated rather than relying on the word "gift."
If you later post about something that arrived unsolicited, that does not automatically turn it into payment — but it may make the original expectations harder to establish. Keep a short record of what was and was not agreed when it arrived: what came, from whom, what was asked of you, and what you did.
Items lent and returned are different again. If a brand ships a camera for a two-week review and you send it back, you have not received the camera. Keep the returns confirmation.
How to value a product
For an ordinary retail product, a sensible starting point is its normal advertised price at the time you receive it.
Keep evidence of that price. Screenshot the product page on the day it arrives, save the link, and note it against the item. It takes a few seconds and it turns a later argument into a record. Where the item was on sale, part of a bundle, or came with conditions attached, note that too — it is relevant.
What will not support a lower figure is the argument creators reach for most often: "I would never have paid £180 for that moisturiser, so to me it's worth nothing." Value here is not personal preference.
Valuation gets harder where there is no normal selling price, where the arrangement involves services rather than goods, or where a bespoke item or experience is involved. In those cases, record how you arrived at your figure and keep the reasoning. A documented, reasonable method is defensible; a number with nothing behind it is not.
Where the answer is genuinely less clear: trips, experiences and services
This is where a lot of creator content online is more confident than it should be, in both directions.
HMRC's Business Income Manual states that to be a taxable trading receipt, income must be money or money's worth. It then gives an example: a trader who receives a non-transferable holiday as a reward for being a good customer has nothing to include in taxable trade profits, because the holiday is not money and, being non-transferable, cannot be converted into money.
So a non-transferable experience is not automatically taxable simply because it was valuable and enjoyable.
But that does not make press trips tax-free, for three reasons:
HMRC's example is not a barter. It concerns a reward for being a good customer, not consideration under an arrangement to produce content. A contracted press trip is a different fact pattern.
HMRC's own creator guidance refers to gifts and services received from promoting products online. That sits in some tension with the manual, and the tension has not been resolved in published guidance.
Where a cash alternative is offered and you take the trip instead, HMRC's guidance on non-cash receipts treats the cash alternative as the measure.
The practical upshot: transferable goods and vouchers you receive for promotional work should be included. Non-transferable trips, stays and experiences need to be looked at against the specific agreement rather than assumed either way — and if the arrangement is significant, it is worth having someone look at the actual terms.
Gifts and the £1,000 trading allowance
The trading allowance means you can receive up to £1,000 of gross trading income in a tax year without needing to tell HMRC. Three points creators get wrong:
It is one allowance, not one per activity. HMRC's example: £800 from content creation plus £500 from selling crafts is £1,300, which you need to report.
It is measured on gross income, and taxable gifted-product value counts. HMRC's own worked example for creators runs: £700 of brand fees, £300 of gifted products, £200 of ad revenue — a total of £1,200, above the threshold. So a creator paid nothing at all, who received £1,400 of PR packages, is over the line.
You cannot always use it. The allowance is not available where the income comes from your employer (or your spouse or civil partner's employer), from a company you or a connected person controls, or from a partnership you are part of. Worth checking if you have your own limited company.
If you go over £1,000, register for Self Assessment by 5 October following the end of the tax year. For 2026/27 income, that is 5 October 2027.
The £3,000 figure is not live
A widely shared claim says you now have nothing to do until £3,000. HMRC addresses this directly and says it is not true.
The government has said it intends to introduce a new online reporting service — allowing people with between £1,000 and £3,000 of side-hustle income to report it without a full Self Assessment return — by the end of the current Parliament. The commencement date has not been confirmed. Until then, the £1,000 threshold applies. It is also a change to how you report, not a new tax-free amount.
A worked example
Illustration only. Assumes England, Wales or Northern Ireland; 2026/27 rates; figures rounded. Not a personalised calculation.
Maya is a UGC creator with a full-time job. In 2026/27 she receives £4,200 in brand fees, £900 in affiliate commission, and keeps gifted products with a retail value of £1,600 — total trading income of £6,700.
Her actual allowable expenses are £1,150, slightly more than the £1,000 trading allowance, so claiming actual expenses gives the lower figure. Taxable profit: £5,550.
Her salary already uses her £12,570 personal allowance, so the profit falls in the basic-rate band and is taxed at 20% — around £1,110. Her self-employment profit is below the £12,570 Class 4 lower profits limit, so no Class 4 National Insurance arises. (That limit applies to self-employment profits on their own, regardless of her salary — a point often misstated.)
Roughly £320 of that bill relates to the gifted products: a cash liability arising from income that arrived as parcels. Maya received £5,100 in cash and owes £1,110 out of it. Manageable if she planned for it; an unwelcome surprise if she did not.
Where additional income of this kind falls above the personal allowance, within the Income Tax basic-rate band and between the Class 4 profit limits, its combined marginal cost could be around 26% in England, Wales or Northern Ireland — 20% Income Tax plus 6% Class 4 National Insurance.
Income and deductions are separate questions
Receiving a gifted item is one question. Whether you get a deduction for it is another, and the answer depends on your accounting basis, what the item is, and what happens to it afterwards.
Where a product is consumed making content and then kept for personal use — skincare, food, clothing, homeware — there is often no offsetting deduction, so the full value is taxed. Where an item is genuinely used in the business, or received to be sold on, the treatment can be different, and the net effect can be much smaller.
The general point is the one to hold onto: do not assume the product cancels out the income. For many creators, a year of gifted beauty products is income with little or nothing set against it. If your gifted volume is significant, the treatment is worth reviewing properly rather than estimated.
What to record
If you have received gifted products this tax year, start a simple log now. Seven columns cover almost everything you will later need:
Date received · Brand or agency · Item · Value · Source of that value (screenshot or link) · What you agreed to do · Where the item ended up (used in content, kept, returned, sold).
Then three habits:
Screenshot on arrival, with the price visible.
Set money aside for non-cash income. Gifts create a cash tax bill with no cash attached. If you set aside a percentage of payments, add the gifted value into that calculation.
Keep the records for at least five years after the relevant 31 January filing deadline. In practice that is close to six years after the end of the tax year.
If you have already filed a return that left gifts out, it is fixable — and HMRC's published approach to penalties treats an unprompted correction more favourably than one made after HMRC gets in touch.
A note on MTD and VAT
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax applies from 6 April 2026 to sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000, falling to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028. Qualifying income is measured on gross income before expenses. Where a gifted product is a taxable trading receipt, its value forms part of that gross income and can therefore affect your MTD position. A creator on £46,000 of cash income plus £6,000 of gifted product is not comfortably under the line.
VAT is a separate regime with its own rules, and barter arrangements are in principle within it. Whether a particular collaboration counts towards the £90,000 registration threshold depends on the facts, including where the brand is based. If you are anywhere near the threshold, this is worth checking rather than assuming.
Related questions
Do I have to declare a gift I never asked for and never posted about?
If it was genuinely unsolicited, came with no conditions, and you gave nothing in return, there is a reasonable argument that no trading receipt arises. Record the circumstances at the time. Posting about it later does not automatically make it payment, but it can make the original position harder to evidence.
Is a gifted holiday or press trip taxable?
It depends on the arrangement. HMRC's manual indicates that a non-transferable item that cannot be converted into money may have nothing to bring into account — but that example concerns a customer reward rather than a contracted collaboration, and HMRC's creator guidance refers to services as well as gifts. Where a cash alternative was offered, the cash figure is the measure. Worth checking against the actual terms.
What if I send the item back?
Then you have not received it. Keep the returns confirmation.
What if I sell a gifted item later?
It depends on how the item was treated when you received it and what you did with it in between. Fact-specific, and worth checking rather than assuming.
I received £600 of gifts and no cash. Do I need to do anything?
You are under the £1,000 allowance, so likely nothing to report — but keep the records. The threshold is cumulative across every side hustle you have, and one more collaboration can take you over it.
Where CreatorBooks fits
CreatorBooks is a UK accountancy firm built for creators. Gifted income is one of the creator-specific areas we focus on most closely, because it is where the rules and the way creators actually work sit furthest apart.
Not sure where you stand? The free Creator Tax Check takes about a minute and flags the areas worth looking at.
This article provides general information only and is not tax advice. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances, and rules and thresholds can change.