A brand sent me free stuff. Do I owe tax on it?

If there's one question we get asked more than any other, it's this one. A brand sends you a product. Maybe you ordered it with a 1p voucher, maybe it just turned up. Now what? Here's how it works, in plain English.

A sample is part of your work

If a brand gives you something because of what you do as a creator, so you'll feature it, review it or sell it, that's not a birthday present. It came to you through your work, and the tax rules treat it as part of your work. That means a free product can count as money made, at what it's worth. We know that's not what anyone wants to hear. It's still better to know.

A genuinely private gift from a friend or family member is a different thing entirely. That's not work, and there's nothing to do.

What it's worth

Use its normal value: what it actually sells for in the shop that day, after any ordinary discounts. Not the crossed-out price, and not the face value of a voucher. If you paid 1p or a few pounds towards it, that payment is a separate thing and gets sorted on its own, like any other payment.

What you did with it is what matters

That's the whole decision: Work or Personal. You don't need to work out values, percentages or what goes where. You just need to write the sample down and say what you did with it.

You're not in trouble

Nobody is expected to have had this perfect from day one. Writing samples down as they arrive, with a rough value and whether you kept them, is the entire job. Do that and your number at the end of the year is right, and there are no surprises.

If your situation is a bit different from the above, you don't have to work it out on your own. Ask in the community.

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Oli
Founder, Doddl