CIS, the VAT reverse charge, gross payment status, Making Tax Digital and payroll for London trade businesses. We only act for trades, and we work with you remotely.
The short version. London is in England, so the Building Safety Levy applies here from 1 October 2026, though developments of fewer than 10 units are exempt, and the dutyholder and competence duties in SI 2023/911 apply to all building work. Everything on the tax side is UK-wide: CIS at 20% and 30% with the return due by the 19th and payment by the 22nd, the VAT domestic reverse charge, VAT registration at £90,000, Making Tax Digital, employer NIC at 15% above £5,000, and the £1,000,000 annual investment allowance. Building control for your work here sits with one of the 32 London boroughs, or the City of London Corporation.
The thing that makes London different for a trade business is not the tax — it is the length of the chain. Commercial fit-out and large residential schemes commonly run four or five contractual layers deep, and every one of those layers has its own CIS question, its own employment status question and, since 6 April 2026, its own fraud exposure.
Start with who is a contractor. A mainstream contractor is any person carrying on a business that includes construction operations, and CIS 340 expressly captures property developers, speculative builders and gang leaders who organise construction labour. But a business with no connection to building at all becomes a deemed contractor if it spends more than £3,000,000 on construction operations in the period of one year ending with that moment. It is a rolling twelve-month test, not an annual average, and it has applied in that form since 6 April 2021. A retailer, a bank or a hotel group refitting its estate crosses it without ever thinking of itself as a builder — and then owes verification, deduction, monthly returns and payment on every construction payment it makes.
Two changes from 6 April 2026 matter most where chains are longest. Under the CIS anti-fraud package, a business that knew or should have known that payments it made or received were connected with fraudulent evasion of tax loses gross payment status immediately, becomes liable for the lost tax, and faces a penalty of 30% of it that is chargeable to its directors personally — with a five-year bar on reapplying. Separately, recruitment agencies became responsible for PAYE and Class 1 NIC on payments to workers supplied via umbrella companies, and where there is no agency, the responsibility falls on the end client.
Read those together and the operational instruction is the same one: be able to name the entity behind every set of hands. On a five-layer London job that is work. It is also now the difference between a compliant business and a director with a personal penalty.
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.
It catches you if you carry on a business that is not itself construction and you spend more than £3,000,000 on construction operations in the period of one year ending at that moment. It is a rolling twelve-month test rather than an annual average, so a single large refit programme can take a retailer, a landlord or a hotel group over it without any change in what the business does. It has applied in that form since 6 April 2021, when Finance Act 2021 replaced the previous three-year averaging test. Once you are a deemed contractor you must verify subcontractors, deduct, file monthly returns by the 19th and pay over by the 22nd, exactly as a builder would.
Since 6 April 2026, the recruitment agency that supplied the worker — and where there is no agency in the chain, the end client. HMRC can recover PAYE underpayments from whichever party carries the responsibility. For a main contractor or a developer sourcing labour directly through an umbrella with no agency involved, that means the PAYE exposure for a failure further down the chain is yours. The practical protections are to know exactly which entities are in the supply chain, keep the contracts, and not engage an umbrella you cannot identify — the same instruction the CIS anti-fraud rules arrive at from a different direction.
Less than most trades expect, and not the things they expect. London is in England, 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 applies here from 1 October 2026, though developments of fewer than 10 units are exempt, and the dutyholder and competence duties in SI 2023/911 apply to all building work — and the income tax on your profit, which is the UK rates — 20%, 40% and 45%, with the higher rate starting at £50,270 on a full personal allowance.
No. We act for trade businesses in London 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 England does change is building safety and, on income tax, uk bands: 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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