Corporate welfare is a pejorative term used to describe a government's bestowal of grants and/or tax breaks on one or more corporations. Usually these actions are seen to be at the expense of the citizens, although in the case of "wealthfare" unevenly distributed to different corporations, they might be seen as at the expense of other corporations as well. The word "wealthfare" is meant to remind one of welfare payments to the poor, and perhaps imply that corporations are much less deserving than the poor.

Some believe the strengthening of United States intellectual property laws in the late 1990s (through such legislation as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act) constitutes corporate welfare.