The term clawback or claw back refers to any money or benefits that have been given out, but are required to be returned (clawed back) due to special circumstances or events, such as the money having been received as the result of a financial crime, or where there is a clawback provision in the executive compensation contract.

In law, clawback is most commonly known as restitution.

In the past, clawback phenomena have been used primarily in securing tax incentives, abatements, tax refunds, and grants. Clawbacks are distinguished from repayments or refunds as they involve a penalty, in addition to a repayment.

The use of tax incentives for attracting jobs and capital investment has grown over the past decades to include performance measures from which to gauge a company's growth. Typical measures are:

More unusual measures are retaining a headquarters at a specific site for a period of time, amount of production increase or production cost decrease per unit, or the requirement to bring a given technology to a commercial market. The recipient will be required to return the monetary value of the incentive plus a penalty and/or interest to the grantor of the incentive, usually a local or state taxing authority. As the use of incentives mature over time, it is sometimes alleged ^[who?] that the triggering of clawbacks for non-performance will likely become more ubiquitous.

Clawbacks can be understood to be the contractual elements that stand between the drive for economic development and community development and the slippery slope of corporate welfare. They are highly controversial and are utilized as community-based guarantees for some expectation of performance. The site location industry normally tries to eliminate or reduce any such promises as part of their negotiations.

A clawback provision is a contractual clause typically included in employment contracts by financial firms, by which money already paid to an employee must be paid back to the employer under certain conditions.

The employees' bonuses are, in a clawback scheme, tied specifically to the performance (or lack thereof) of the financial product(s) the individual(s) may have created and/or sold as part of his or her job expecting a high profit. If the product does indeed do well over a long period of time, and permanently improves the nature of the firm, the bonuses paid to the individual are allowed to be retained by the individual. However, if the product fails, and damages the nature of the firm—even years down the line from the product's inception—then the firm has the right to revoke, reclaim, or otherwise repossess some or all of the bonus amount(s). However, research shows managers who are subject to clawback provisions that are newly in place in a company often try to offset their increased risk of bonus clawback by demanding an increase in base salary that is not subject to being clawed back.