CIS, the VAT reverse charge, gross payment status, Making Tax Digital and payroll for Cardiff trade businesses. We only act for trades, and we work with you remotely.
Read this first. Two of the regimes most often described as UK-wide are not. The Building Safety Levy is imposed by an England statutory instrument (SI 2025/1236) and does not apply to a site in Cardiff. The dutyholder and competence duties come from The Building Regulations etc. (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023, SI 2023/911, and do not extend here either. Your CIS and VAT position, by contrast, is identical to an English trade's — and the income tax on your profit is same as england: 20% / 40% / 45%.
Read this first, because it is the thing most likely to be got wrong on a page about a Welsh site. The Building Safety Levy is England only. It commences on 1 October 2026 under The Building Safety Levy (England) Regulations 2025, SI 2025/1236, and it does not apply to a development in Cardiff. Neither do the dutyholder and competence duties in The Building Regulations etc. (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023, SI 2023/911 — that instrument is England's, and the duties it creates on clients, principal designers, designers, principal contractors and contractors do not extend across the border.
That matters because a great deal of trade-facing commentary treats English building safety obligations as UK-wide. If you have been told that you must evidence competence under regulations 11F to 11H, or that your ten-unit scheme will attract a per-square-metre levy, check which nation the instrument names before you price for it.
Now the part that does not change at all. CIS is UK-wide. The two deduction rates are 20% standard and 30% higher, gross payment status is the absence of a deduction rather than a third rate, the monthly return is due by the 19th and the money by the 22nd electronically. From 6 April 2026 mainstream contractors must file a nil return or notify inactivity in a month with no subcontractor payments — that applies in Cardiff exactly as in Bristol.
The same is true of the VAT domestic reverse charge under section 55A VAT Act 1994, of the £90,000 VAT registration threshold, of Making Tax Digital and its £50,000, £30,000 and £20,000 thresholds, of employer NIC at 15% above £5,000, of the £10,500 Employment Allowance, of the April 2026 minimum wage rates, of day-one statutory sick pay, of the £1,000,000 annual investment allowance and of the 55p mileage rate.
Income tax on your profit is also the same as England's: 20%, 40% and 45%, with the higher rate starting at £50,270 on a full personal allowance. So the honest summary for a Welsh trade business is that your tax position is identical to an English one, and two building safety regimes that you may have been told to budget for are not yours.
The same work whichever trade you are in, because the problems are the scheme's rather than the trade's. We run the monthly CIS return and verification cycle, apply for and protect gross payment status, get the reverse charge right on your invoices and get end user notifications on file, put your records on software that satisfies Making Tax Digital, run payroll with the CIS offset claimed monthly through the employer payment summary, and prepare the accounts and tax return.
Two things we do that a general accountant usually does not. We reconcile your CIS suffered to the payment and deduction statements every month rather than once a year, which is where under-claimed materials and missing statements turn up — see the records guide. And we treat your VAT compliance as part of your CIS position, because since 6 April 2024 it literally is: VAT joined CIS, PAYE, income tax and corporation tax in the gross payment status compliance test.
We write for each trade separately, because the scope questions differ. An electrician is inside CIS on power, lighting and fire protection and outside it on burglar alarms and CCTV. A steel fabricator is outside the scheme on manufacture and delivery to site and inside it on erection. A scaffolder is inside CIS, and separately hired scaffolding is standard rated for VAT even on a zero-rated new build. There are pages for plumbers, roofers, groundworkers, joiners, bricklayers, plasterers and every other trade we act for.
Three free calculators, no email required: the CIS deduction calculator shows what materials do to a deduction, the gross payment status checker tests you against all three statutory tests, and the reverse charge checker works through the six conditions on a specific job.
No. The levy is imposed by The Building Safety Levy (England) Regulations 2025, SI 2025/1236, and as the title indicates it is an England-only charge. It commences on 1 October 2026 on applications for building control approval relating to dwellings or purpose-built student accommodation bedspaces in England, with developments of fewer than 10 units exempt even there. A development in Cardiff or anywhere else in Wales does not attract it. The same border applies to the dutyholder and competence duties in The Building Regulations etc. (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023, SI 2023/911, which are also an England instrument.
No. The Construction Industry Scheme is UK-wide and operates identically in Cardiff and in England: the standard deduction rate is 20% and the higher rate 30%, gross payment status means no deduction at all, the monthly return is due by the 19th of the month and the deductions must reach HMRC by the 22nd electronically or the 19th by post. The April 2026 changes apply here too — the reinstated nil return obligation for mainstream contractors, the anti-fraud measures with their 30% penalty reaching directors personally, and the new exemption for payments to local authorities and public bodies. So does the VAT domestic reverse charge.
Less than most trades expect, and not the things they expect. Cardiff is in Wales, and the Construction Industry Scheme is UK-wide: 20% standard rate, 30% higher rate, the monthly return due by the 19th and the money by the 22nd. The VAT domestic reverse charge, the £90,000 registration threshold, Making Tax Digital, National Insurance, corporation tax and the £1,000,000 annual investment allowance are identical too. What changes is building safety — the Building Safety Levy is England only, so it does not apply to a Welsh site at all, and SI 2023/911 is an England instrument, so the dutyholder and competence duties it creates do not extend here — and the income tax on your profit, which is the same rates as England — 20%, 40% and 45%, with the higher rate starting at £50,270 on a full personal allowance.
No. We act for trade businesses in Cardiff and across the UK remotely — phone, WhatsApp, video and email, with records and approvals handled online. That is deliberate rather than a limitation, because what decides a trade's tax position is not local knowledge but knowing the scheme: whether the work is a construction operation within CIS, whether the payment is CIS-reportable, whether your customer has notified end user status in writing, whether the materials figure on your invoice will stand up, and whether you should have gross payment status. None of that is answered by being twenty minutes down the road. What being in Wales does change is building safety and, on income tax, same as england: 20% / 40% / 45% — and we take that into account without needing an office here. The calculators on this site are free and need no conversation at all.
A free call about your CIS position, your VAT treatment and what is actually locked up. If we cannot save you anything, we will say so.
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