Benefit game

One of our large corporate clients is sponsoring an important sporting event. In return for this they have received a number of tickets for various activities at different venues.

The directors plan to use a proportion of the tickets to invite their clients to come along to those events as spectators.

They also plan to give some tickets to their employees so that they can have some ‘days out’ at the games as a reward for their hard work. Our question is whether there are any benefit in kind implications for the directors or employees here.

If they had been purchased then the tickets would obviously have had a cost; however it seems to us that our client has effectively acquired them for free.

Our client company would have given the sponsorship for advertising and marketing purposes even...