Enjoy those Christmas freebies while you can: business gifts to fall foul of new corruption law

That bottle of champagne sent by a supplier. That box of chocolates given to a valued customer. Those tickets to a Premiership football match you obtained for a business contact. Watch out: they could soon be deemed illegal bribes.

That bottle of champagne sent by a supplier. That box of chocolates given to a valued customer. Those tickets to a Premiership football match you obtained for a business contact. Watch out: they could soon be deemed illegal bribes.

The Corruption Bill, which is likely to come before Parliament next year, is expected to outlaw the giving of inducements to people to gain a business advantage.

It is already illegal to pay inducements overseas - this was one of the measures included in the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act, rushed through after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The new Corruption Bill will outlaw the practice in the UK.

Of course, bribery has been illegal for more than 100 years - but in law, corporate gift giving is a grey area. In the US, the law bans the giving of inducements, except when you are paying someone to do something he or she would have done anyway.

However, according to Edwin Harland, director of forensic services at accountant PricewaterhouseCoopers, no such get-out was included in the draft Corruption Bill, published earlier this year. Nor is there a cut-off point below which a gift could not be considered a bribe. Unless the Bill is changed, Mr Harland warns that business people could face charges for the free gifts they send out every Christmas.

He also points to potential problems when inviting people to arts or sporting events. "It's OK if you entertain someone in a corporate box - you can argue that you are discussing work - but if you give them the tickets, then that could be a bribe," he said.

PwC estimates that two-thirds of FTSE 100 companies, and an even higher percentage of smaller firms, do not have an effective code and framework for corporate giving, and could find themselves facing problems.