You have a customer who did a lot of business with you last year.  You’d like to say “thank you” with a gift to keep the relationship strong and help ensure future business.  This is standard practice in the commercial world.  In federal, though, you may have just caused a big headache for your customer and yourself.  There are strict limits on giving gifts to federal employees.  The standard rule is $20 per occasion, but no more than $50 from a specific company in any year total.  Some agencies have a “zero tolerance” policy for gifts.  When in doubt, ask.  The trick is some feds will take gifts, even though they’ve had ethics training.  You, however, can get in more trouble than your customer if rules are violated and you or the customer gets turned in.  Not only can you lose the business you were trying to grow, your company may have new hurdles to jump in order to get new business.  People have gotten in trouble for seemingly innocuous things like giving a ride to the airport, even though both the fed and the contractor were going to the same place at the same time.  Your best defense is to know the rules and stick to them.  Don’t know the rules?  Annual ethics training is a “best practice” for government contractors.  Follow that practice.