[ulf-77723]

Not knowing how the game works: What is legal in the US regarding kickbacks? Is it ok to get someone tickets for a gameday? To get invited to a party or taking a holiday? Pure cash seems a little odd to me - this must have been found in some company booking accounts, I guess

[Moto7451]

Most employee handbooks will spell out what’s ok for most of the examples you gave. A lot of that will be ethics oriented but if you follow the rules you’re also behaving in a way the company isn’t going to find to be fraudulent and you’ll avoid those legal issues.

Pure cash is a problem, but for employees in Sales there’s basically a schedule for when you give and when you expect exchanges of tickets/events/small gifts and rules for what can be accepted and it scales with the position. When I worked in the same office as sales the gifts that came in made Christmas a bonanza. Those really expensive luxury fruit baskets I personally won’t buy for myself were very common. Junior’s Cheesecake from prior to their mail order and grocery store business taking off was a huge deal. Sometimes we got socks and ties. A LOT of socks. They addressed it to the whole office so the 30 or so engineers got to partake with the 500 or so sales and support members.

At one company the CEO took a client to the Super Bowl (they wanted to go also, win win). Totally fine. I’ve been the technical lead on some deals and have gotten some of the perks like very expensive dinners, some token gifts (on the scale of a very nice box of chocolates), branded merch, etc. At one place I worked a gift card or cash equivalent was ok if it was reimbursing something (like your parking or flight) but otherwise had to be less than $100.

For most places I’ve worked the rules are essentially that if it’s “fun”, legal, and substantially less than your pay/commission it’s probably allowed; if it’s clearly a bribe it is not.

[hammock]

Ignore the comments about handbooks. Ethics is not the same as law. In US law, generally (federal and/or state statutes apply) the line between legal conduct and illegal bribery is crossed when a payment, gift or benefit is made with corrupt intent to influence someone in a position of trust to act improperly

[delfinom]

Depends, it can come down to your corporate employment contracts and corporate policies. Also, if you work for a public company, you usually have a fiduciary duty to shareholders at a certain managerial level, so it falls into the illegal territory.

If you own your own company, it's usually not a big deal to let people wine and dine you lol

[gruez]

>per-say

*per se

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/per_se

[realslimjd]

It is illegal if you're a government employee or working as a government contractor. What most people get in trouble for is laundering the money that they're taking in bribes.

[lotsofpulp]

>Is it ok to get someone tickets for a gameday?

Not if there is a record of the tickets being given as a personal favor in exchange for a business favor.

[solardev]

I mean, when the highest levels of government routinely operate on bribes... it kinda sets the expectation that this is normal. It's one thing when you're a rank and file employee subject to HR rules. At the higher levels, the same rules do not apply.